CPSC 543 Lab 1: No-tech Puppeteering

This lab has been completed by 'Aidin Mirsaeidi' and 'Li Huan'.

In this lab, we were assigned to formulate three hardware sketches/designs to acheive 1, 10 and 100 mm movements. Below are descriptions of the three respective sketches:

Sketch #1:

This is a simple shaft-seesaw meachanism. As depicted in the figure below, the shaft is used as an actuator which is attached to the seesaw by a string. There is a pin attached to the board which prevents the seesaw to move above the balancing point where the wooden rod would be horizontal. The blue styrofoam is used as a pivot for the seesaw.

As you turn the shaft CCW, the left portion of the seesaw will move upwards while the small portion of the seesaw on the right hand side will move downwards. The division of length of the rod is in such way so that as you move the rod upwards to a horizontal position, the downward movement of right portion of the rod will be approximately 1 mm. This is demonstrated by a short clip:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6TEy8hf1z4I&feature=youtu.be



Sketch #2:

This is a mechanism to generate linear movement of a box. The movement is actuated by a piece of elastic band along with a wooden rod. The movement of the rod is controlled by a pair of metal posts which are pinned down to the board. A box is placed in between two metal posts following the wooden rod; as you pull the elastic band and fire the rod, the rod will collide with the box and hence, will cause a linear movement of the box. Through trial and error, we experimentally found how far we need to pull the elastic band to produce a movement of 10 mm. This sketch is demonstrated through a short video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=APNZjfMkxhM&context=C34dd9a8ADOEgsToPDskJ2MzSvOFO9ERMtAQsgJsfR

Sketch # 3

Our last sketch is a simple gear mechanism. Two gears are connected together by a string and two respective shafts are passed through the gears. The shaft on the first gear is used for actuation while the second shaft is connected to a box which we want to move. As you rotate the first shaft CCW, the second gear will rotate CCW and correspondingly, the string is wrraped around the second shaft and the box moves to the left. The 100 mm desitance is marked down so that we exactly move the box 100 mm. The demonstration can be viewed in this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZPEDiSS92U&feature=youtu.be