Week 13
Operating Principles &
Mechanism Designs
All devices, apparatus and equipment, at their core, are designed based on working principles that are either mechanical, electrical, chemical or magnetism.
For example :
Brewing of Coffee involves the principles of leaching
Obtaining fatty acids from vegetable oil using propane (Liquid-liquid extraction)
Air-lift pump (such as the one inside a coffee maker) works on the principle of buoyancy
To enable working principles to work efficiently, mechanisms are often required. A few examples of common mechanisms in prototypes are :
Actuators (converts stored energy into motion)
Cams (convert the rotation of a shaft into a reciprocating linear motion)
Gears (transmit torque)
Ratchets (locks in a direction, preventing backflow)
Lever (transmit and amplify force by fixing a point about a fulcrum/pivot point)
Springs (store and dissipate energy)(compression, extension etc)
Activity : Ping Pong Ball Launcher
The task was to design a ping pong ball launcher within 45 minutes with the following specifications:
Shoot and reload ping pong balls
Store at least 5 ping pong balls
Ball should be propelled with stored energy
Figure 1: Ping Pong Ball Launcher
Our group decided on a fully manual ping pong ball launcher with the main mechanism to utilize the compressive nature of the spring to launch the ping pong ball.
Figure 2: Our Ping Pong Ball Launcher
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