6) Final Prototype

 Final Design:

        Our final prototype is a four bar mechanism. The mechanism has three grounded pins, three manufactured linkages, two slots, and five rotational joints. We have the bucket attached to the end of our coupling linkage. We chose this position because it has the required motion and the space to attach a bucket to the end. This location allowed up to fasten the bucket without it causing interference between the other linkages. From our kinematic analysis the mechanism has one degree of freedom and meets our requirements presented in our design goals. Also from the kinematic analysis we were able to see that the present Coriolis acceleration is relatively low until the quick acceleration where it spikes for both slots, figure 3.8. The mechanism is powered by a single NEMA stepper motor running at a constant angular velocity. The Arduino code used is located in the appendix of this report, also figure 5.3. The total cost of of this project came out to be $76.62. A break down of the cost can be found in the Bill of Materials section of the appendix. 

        The video below shows our mechanism performing its desired task of collecting from the pool of water and dispensing it back into the capture tank.

Figure 6.1. Video of Operation