Design - Can't Do This

Once we had decided on the general approach we began working on the individual mechanisms.

Base Design

The base needed to have a rotational component, we decided to take some inspiration from rotating cake stands and create a Lazy Susan. The plan for the base was to use laser cut Baltic Birch from TIW, this was because Baltic Birch is sold at TIW relatively cheaply and because the design of our base required large flat parts which can be most effectively manufactured using a laser cutter. The ball bearings were also from TIW and were leftover from some ones old project so we used them in our project.

1) Outer ring to retain whatever we decide to sweep since oil wasn't feasible option

2) Stationary base that is the part getting swept

3) Rotating base that has mechanism and electronics mounted to it

1) Base layer

2) Layer that has a slot for ball bearings

3) Layer with the outer ring pieces and the rotating inner circle

4) Outer ring to retain items

Klann Mechanism

The Klann mechanism was designed based on the lengths we found using our simulation. We sized our components, linkages, and base using the motor size as a starting point because it was the main component that we didnt have dimensional control over. The Klann Mechanism was the first thing we designed in CAD because it was the main part of the project.

Here you can see the SOLIDWORKS design of the mechanism, this iteration does not include joints because that was a separate design challenge.

As you can see in the linkage design many of the pieces are flush against each other, we then started designing our joints to work around this challenge.

The linkages are also planned to be laser cut because they are all flat pieces that can be laser cut much faster than they can be 3D printed.

Pin Joints

We used 3 different pin joint designs for different parts of the linkages

The pin joints are designed to be 3D printed because they are custom hardware that has geometry that is most easily 3D printed. There is not much force going through all of the linkages so we decided that 3D printed hardware would be sufficient to support the loads required for our application.

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Main Assembly

After completing that Klann Mechanism Assembly we completed the CAD for the main assembly that included the motor, base, and bevel gears.

The motor runs a combination gear that has 2 parts 

1) The spur gear that runs the linkage

2) The bevel gear that rotates the mechanism with respect to the base

This combination gear helped us achieve our goal of using a single motor for the entire project.

Both the bevel gears and the combination gear were also designed to be 3D printed because it allowed us to design gears with specific geometry (pitch, size, teeth, etc).

The Linkage + Gear assembly was then added to a larger assembly that included the base we had designed as seen in the images from the "Base Design" section above.