Break it Apart (Take 1)

Break It Apart!

The purpose of this project was to further develop our engineer sketching and investigation skills by breaking an object apart. We brought in an object from home and were tasked to break it apart and learn about all the moving parts. The assignment details are as follows:

Individually:

  1. Disassemble your object,

  2. Research its components,

  3. Conceptual sketch it and draw an exploded view in your Engineering journal

Collaborate with your team to:

  1. Exchange your findings

  2. Find similarities of any kind (materials, functions, sub functions, etc...) between the group's objects

  3. Determine what question (human need) do the individual objects answer? Are they "good" objects from an Engineering standpoint? Remember An engineer would focus on the creative use of energy, materials, motion, and information to serve human needs in the evaluation of a good object.

  4. Reflect upon the process. Are the teams your in working effectively, use the insight to determine your Capstone groups.

Engineering Drawings

  • 3D object on a 2D piece of paper by a process called projection

1) Isomentric Drawing: 3 axes form 120 degree angles with each other; parallel lines

2) Perspective Drawing: appear the way the human eye would see them

3) Orthographic Drawing: Objects appear to be in a "glass box" with each face projected onto a single side of the box

CAD - Computer Aided Design Software: can accurately represent a 3D image

Engineering Sketch: free hand drawing used to get ideas on paper quickly

Here is my object before I broke it apart.

To the right is my detailed sketch of the light after I broke it apart. It includes the dimensions and is to scale.

Object Sketch.pdf

Reflection

This project was extremely beneficial for introducing us to the engineering process and giving us a good "warm-up" for engineer sketching. As an individual, I learned a little more about the research questions to think about when investigating the moving parts of something. I thought about several things including:

  • What is it’s purpose (What is it supposed to do)?

  • What is the basic function?

  • What real-life problem/human need is the object solving?

  • What are the functions of its parts/components?

I was able to answer these questions through breaking it apart and got to learn more about LEDs and all of the individual components that make them work.

This project also required us to continue developing our collaboration skills. After we finished our individual tasks, we swapped with our classmates to give and receive feedback about how to improve our sketching skills. I will keep in mind some of the comments I got when working on future sketches to make sure they are effective in showcasing all the necessary parts and can be easily understood/explained.

I did a good job on organizing my sketches and drawing them detailed enough for all the parts to be easily seen. This is important because engineering sketches should be easy to understand and organized enough to look back on them and use the information. Somethings that I could improve on are adding more dimensions of individual parts and researching more in depth about the smaller components within the LED light. Improving on this would make my sketch more useful in any building or engineering of a similar project in the future and provide more detail on the object itself.