Blog 6

Topic 7

Topic 7 is all about operating principles and mechanism . During this lesson, we learnt the different operating principles and mechanism designs.

Operating principles are actually just how things works. For example, the operating principle for distillation is the difference in volatility. A difference in volatility would mean that the liquid being distillated will boil off at different temperature.

Mechanisms are the fundamental chemical processes involved in or responsible for an action, reaction or other natural phenomenon. 

These are the 6 essential mechanism in functional prototypes

• Actuators ( Converts stored energy into motion)
• Cams (Converts the rotation of a shaft into simple or complex reciprocating linear motion. They can be sliding or rotational pieces in a mechanical linkage)
• Gears ( Transmit torque and to adjust rotational velocity)
• Lever (Transmit and amplify force by fixing the input and output about a fulcrum or pivot point)
• Ratchets (They lock in one direction, allowing them to tighten without fear of going "backwards")
• Springs ( Store and dissipate energy)

We are then tasked to make a ping pong ball launcher with the use of the mechanisms. This is how our design looks like.

Our design made use of spring and lever as our main mechanism. We used the springs to push ping pong balls up the magazine to the firing chamber. We then next need to cock the gun and we use a lever to stop the firing spring from springing out. We then press the trigger which releases the spring and thus firing the balls. The name of our device is the kidblaster 69 but i highly doubt my team agreed on that name HAHA.

Practical 4

We need to design a marble machine for this practical. The marble machine we make must make use of the mechanism that was mentioned above. For our design, we have decided to use CAMS as our main mechanism. What we are trying to achieve is a machine where the marble roll down a slide and will climb a stair back up the slide and repeat. This is how our design looks like.

We try not to use glue gun when we are making our product. So we make use of a lot of slots and tabs. This is how our product looked like

These are all the mini parts that we made to fit in together.

Next, we need to make the mechanism that make our device works, THE CAMSSSSS. We decided to cut out oval shape looking things and we stole a stick to make it work. 

We then make the ladders which was the hard part. We need to make sure every dimension was right. Cutting out the cupboard took a very long time but it was worth it.

We put everything together and this is how our product worked out

This is a picture of our group and the product