Break It Apart

Evidence of Work/Content

Our task for the Break It Apart project was to take an object that we found at our house and deconstruct it. Since that doesn't work for any object (for the purpose of the project), it had to be an object that was complex, but not too complex. Examples of things people brought in were clocks, flashlights, calculators, and electronic toys. From there, we had to go step by step and use various tools to take our object apart, while taking notes, asking questions, and drawing sketches to help us remember everything. Once the object was taken apart, our next step was to find all of the components, sketch them out in detailed and accurate drawings, and then sketch how the object would go back together. For this, we had to use scaled drawings that had precise details about the whole object and what was inside. Lastly, we used exploded view to draw, showing how each piece fit into the object as a whole and wrote down our observations and questions.

For my project, I chose to do a flying drone that when working, can support itself in air and move around in various directions. When taking it apart, I found that the toy had a small area where all of the parts were that allowed it to work, and then it had a wide cage around it. This made it pretty easy to disassemble at first, as only two screws held the cage together. After, I was able to take out the propellors and spinning mechanism, the battery, motherboard, and LED lights. Once I had separated out all of the pieces, it was time for the drawings. I created conceptual sketches showing, in detail, the motherboard, the breakdown of the propellor mechanism, and the outside cage and base. Finally, I put it all together in an exploded view to show the different pieces and where they went into the toy drone as a whole. My last step was to note down any current observations I had, ask any remaining questions, and to create a flowchart. The flowchart consisted of the steps the object would go through to perform its functions. For my drone, it went from pressing a button to turn it on to making the propellors spin and lighting up the LEDs. My conceptual sketches for this project are shown below.

Reflection

For this project, I think two skills that I excelled at were organization and problem solving. For organization, I made sure that I had a plastic bag to keep all of the parts of the drone after I took them off the main piece. I saved them in case I needed to reconstruct it or in case I wanted to examine the parts more closely for my observations and conceptual sketches. I also made sure that I checked everything off the list in terms of drawing the parts, I made sure I drew every part and included every detail to the drawing to make it the most accurate it could be. For problem solving, I ran into a few issues when deconstructing, but I was easily able to get around them and keep working. One of the difficulties I had was that the battery was attached and stuck to the back of the motherboard, but I wanted to take it off to look at both parts. Since it had an adhesive on it that was hard to remove, I couldn't pull it off and cutting it didn't seem to be working. Instead, I was able to chip away at the adhesive and get it apart bit by bit. It took a little longer than I would have liked, but at least in the end I was able to successfully separate the two parts. Organization and problem solving are two things that stood out to me for doing well, but there were other aspects where I succeeded too.

On the other hand, for things that I feel like I could work on, my time management and work ethic skills were not as great as they usually are. First of all, I started the project a little later than others as I was examining the object more before I took it apart, but it would have been more useful for me to look at it after I had opened up the drone, even if only a little. Then, when it came time for the conceptual sketches, I kept putting them off because it seemed like a lot of work. However, once I started, I realized that it kept getting easier as I continued on with the project. If I had started all of it earlier, it might have kept me from being rushed towards the end. For my work ethic skills, it goes along with my time management issues. I started to put off the work a little bit, but then realized towards the end that I still had a lot of the project to get done, and so it took me more time than I would have liked. However, overall, I think that this project was a success for me and my final works turned out pretty much as I expected, and this was a good start to the year.