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Premise
Premise
For MECE 104 our task is to build a chime machine and through the process, learn about teamwork and the engineering design process. Since I had previous experience this class was especially exciting because it was an opportunity for me to push myself to create an amazing robot.
Initial Designs
Initial Designs
First we individually created designs for the different ways we might execute every part of the chime machine. While the assignment required us to only write one or two ideas, I spent my weekend in a creative frenzie, racing to get all my ideas onto paper.
Final Design
Final Design
After thinking throguh all of our own designs our group got together and looked for a consensious on what our design would start to look like.
CAD
CAD
With a design in mind we begun the CAD for our chime machine. If you know me at all (or have spent much time reading through my website) You'll know how much I love CAD! This section of the Design Process was the one I was most looking forward to and the section where I really started to take the lead.
Testing
Testing
We knew we would have little material to spare in our final design so we spent a significant portion of time on testing to ensure our machine would work on the first attempt.
Final Design
Final Design
Our final CAD design was completed with only a few weeks before the project due date. We settled on a design with twelve chimes, each with induvisual striking mechanisms actuated by a removable barrel. The barrel was to have snap in-snap out pins to control which notes are played when. We also added markings throughout the barrel to more easily put them in the correct place
Fabrication
Fabrication
We spent the next week fabricating the various 3D printed and laser cut parts. We opted to use SLA (resin) printing as opposed to FDM because we needed hundreds of high resolution parts for this project.
Assembly
Assembly
We knew our design was very complicated with many parts so we made sure to design it to be easy to assemble. We designed it into five subsystems that could be manufactured independently by one of our members simultaneously. using this method we were able to assemble 70% machine in one week and spent the next week focused on the more complicated barrel mechanism.
Ways to improve!
Ways to improve!
While we were proud of our final result there were a couple ways we could have improved our design if we had more time or the opportunity to construct a version two. Next time we would have taken more care in our barrel fabrication and assembly. We will incoporate more dampener customization to allow more flexible mounting so it would interface with the chimes correctly. If we had another couple days to work on the machine We would have been able to strengthen more than just the chime mounts.
Imagine!
Imagine!
Because of the complexity of our machine we were invited to present it at Imagine RIT, RIT's anual STEAM project showcase. I spent almost six consecutive hours showing our machine to attendees of the event and even attracted a few crowds!
Video
Video
Following the completion of our project we created a short video to present it to the rest of our class and to our instructors. This video may be improved in the future.
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