For my final project, I want to create something that involves putting parts together and involves the use of gears. After looking at projects in Thingverse, I want to create a multi-part gear object. I went through a couple ideas on what I could do: toy car, a box that opens with gears, something resembling a mechanical watch, and other ideas. I finally concluded with a Ferris/water wheel.
The rotating wheel will be created and put together by assembling multiple parts. With roughly 10 parts that would be assembled: two wheels, three gears, the stand for the wheels, and the platform. I intend to make the wheel turn by connecting a gear to the inside of each wheel. One of the gear wheels will be turned by a lever outside of wheel. Then, there will be a center gear shaft that will turn making the second wheel turn and the bottom platform turn. The hardest part of the assignment will be creating the gears and getting them to work properly. If I can’t get the gears to work properly, the non-rotating wheel will still look decent.
I hope to make the rotating wheel out of wood. I was thinking about creating out of 3D printing and wood, but that would look weird and unappealing. Making the wheel out of wood would look a lot better. The wheels, gears, and bottom platform will be easy to make out of wood. The hardest part to make out of wood will be the lever and the stand for the wheels, since those will have curvature to them and a harder design to them. If worse comes to worse, those can be made in a 3D printer.
The project design pictures above are not the final, complete designs. They are missing the gears and bottom platform. For a picture, there will be a gear shaft in the middle with two gears at each end. The gears faces will be horizontal. The bottom gear turns bottom platform, the top gear turns the second wheel. Then there is a lever that will turn the right wheel. I know it is hard to picture but it would go something like that.
How each piece got created:
1: The wheels: The easiest part to create, the wheels. The wheels were made by creating a circle, then attaching rectangles and rotating them to appear as a wheel. After giving a surface to each circle and rectangle, the surfaces are given some width with ExtrudeSrf. The center circle of the wheel will have a hole so that the gear parts can be attached to it.
2: Wheel stand: This was a little trickier. The stand was created using three circles, lines, and extrusion for the vertical part. Using trim, I was able to make a triangle with circular points, then extrude the surface. The bottom part of the stand was made by using a half-circle and box. The half-circle was extruded and then BooleanUnion with the box.
3. Gears: The gears are a side part for now. They are a lot more complicated than they appear. Making a gear shape is not enough. The gears have to be certain shape so that they can roll of each other. The gears are not included yet in the Project Design, but will, hopefully, be added towards the end of the design.
Rendering: The final project design was the fun part. I got to play with how it could look like in real life. For the project, the material of the object would be in wood. I tried different types of wood, but wasn’t quite sure exactly what wood I would be using in the final project. I used both V-Ray in Rhino and Fusion 360 to render the rotation wheel. I had a problem installing a preset background, so I kept the plain background. I thought that would be enough, since the object doesn’t have a particular background setting. From the renderings, you can somewhat tell the difference in software used. V-ray does a better job with rendering.
Final Steps: After designing and getting an idea of my final project started, I changed some things to my form. It did not end up like the form I had rendered or the idea I had planned for it. Things that changed in my final form: the functionality of the form, material, and size.
In the design process, I did not have a clear way of creating a gear since I never had experience with them. After a while, I found a Rhino plug in on the internet that allowed the creation of gears. The plug in is called RhinoGears. This made the creation of the gear easier. I wonder what the difference in functionality the amount of teeth the gears would do.
Functionality: What I had originally planned for the form, it would be a rotating wheel with a four part gear system. Each wheel having its own gear attached to the inside and a crank attached to the outside of one of the wheels. The crank would rotate a inner gear shaft, rotating the second wheel and rotating the bottom platform. This was not the case for the final set up of my form. Instead of the four gear system, there is a two gear system; the gear shaft in the middle and the two wheels with attached gears inside.
Here are the parts that I finished with. There are two wheels, two gears for the wheels, and two vertical stands. In this case, the thicker gear is placed in the center of the bottom stand and it is used to rotate the two wheels. To rotate the middle gear, I used a string. It worked out pretty well.
Material: For material, I planned to make the form out of wood like poplar and using the laser cutter. Throughout the process, that changed. I first went through testing by using the 3D printer. The first print of the wheel did not work so well because of the placement of the gear that was attached to the wheel. That is when I created the gear that is attached to the wheel separately. To adjust, I made the gear shaft that is attached to the wheel long. When I tried that, I could make the wheels rotate with little error. After that partial success, I went over to laser cut the form but the laser cut did not work well. After a single attempt, I switched over to the 3D printed model.
Final Form: To finish it off, I ended up using my last 3D printed model for my final form. I wanted to give the form a different touch than the original 3D printed look, so I ended up painting the form. I used two different types of colors for the 3D printed model, brown and black. I gave the bottom and side stand three covers of the color, but I gave the wheel and gears less covers because I started to look the faint, mix color. Made it look like a old rusty water wheel.
Thoughts: After finishing the form, there are a couple things I would do different. I would make the form a bit bigger than what it is right now. I would like to try to make it out of wood as well. Also, considering that my intention was to make something that involved gears, I would probably add more the gear system and try to make it more complex. That is something I really wanted to focus on. Overall, the project, considering it is small, is nice. I like it and it can be used just for display considering I like the color of the wheel. From what I planned to make and what I ended up making, there was a big difference.
Changes: The way I would organize myself. I did not consider the complexity and the amount of time that would actually take into making this project. If I would have started earlier and tested things out more, I could have done the form in wood. The biggest thing I did learn from this project is time and testing. Getting things done in paper and rhino is completely different to completing it into something tangible. When I finished creating my Rhino file, I thought I was more than half way done with the project, which is not the case. Considering I only did three tests, I could have done more which could have made the final form a lot better. When I tested out the forms, I changed wheel size, wheel gear length, and gear size. With more testing I could have changed the middle gear, its interaction with the wheel gears, and the material of the form.
Fernando Velasco Ramirez 