Team 12 - Conclusions and Future Work

Overall, our design performed as expected: it was able to flip the switch back as well as raise and lower a wagging finger. However, there are still some changes that could be made to improve the design if we were to make another prototype. 

In order to get a more pronounced wagging motion, the gears in the timing belt connecting the parallel shafts could be switched out to both be large gears as opposed to one small and one large gear that are currently being used. As discussed earlier, the torque requirement to raise/lower was too large for the small radius gears. What was originally intended to be a 1:1 timing belt with two small gears was implemented as a 3:1 timing belt with one small and one large gear. Because of this, the input to the wagging mechanism was only 10RPM (it was stepped down to 3.33RPM by the 3:1 timing belt connecting the shafts, and was stepped back up to 10RPM by the 1:3 timing belt in the finger assembly after the bevel gears). Modifying the timing belt to be two large gears of the same size would result in a ratio between shafts of 1:1, and the input to the wagging mechanism would be 30RPM as was originally intended so the wagging motion would happen more frequently. 

Additionally, it may be possible to have a more polished finish by decreasing the size of the design and enclosing it inside a box so that only the switch is visible when not in use.