Because we decided to laser cut all of our pieces, we saved a great deal of time. We first started off by laser cutting the gear as well as the ring gear. This was one of the most crucial pieces in our carousel as the whole system would fail if the gear and ring gear did not align properly. After various tests, we decided that the gears worked well with one another and proceed to assemble the rest of the carousel.
Figure 9. Final Assembled Base of Carousel
Our next task in the assembly was getting our joints to work. This actually turned out to be a bit tricky for us at first because this was all made out of wood as seen on Figure 10.
Figure 10. Wooden Joint
We ran into an issue where the joint would not move up and down when connected to the slider. However, we overcame this issue by making slight modifications to our CAD model as some of the fits were a bit too tight which restricted some movement. Additionally, we had to make a modification to our wooden beads as the holes in it were too small for our wooden dowels.
Figure 11. Increasing the Diameter in the Beads
After assembling the joints and connecting them to our laser cut sliders, we proceeded to add the metal poles that our joints would be going up and down on. There was also a metal rod inserted on each of these poles so that our acrylic-cut animals would be attached to so they can smoothly slide up and down the pole.
Our final task was assemble the base as well at add a top to the carousel so that it could connect all of the poles together. Laser cutting the top was very simple, and it attached very easy to the carousel, but we faced issues with the base. Originally, we wanted the base to be the only part that was 3D printed, but do to the inaccuracies of the 3D printer, we could not bolt down the rings to the base. Thus, we went back to our initial plan of laser cutting everything, and modified our CAD model in order to laser cut the whole base.
Figure 12. Servo and Arduino Fitting in Base
As seen in Figure 12 above, the laser cut base was very successful and saved a lot of manufacturing time. The servo and Arduino had a snug fit in the base, and this was critical in our design as the base needed to securely hold the servo so that the gear could remain in place.