Blog Entry 6

Hi everyone!!! Today I'll be sharing my experience designing a shooting and loading mechanism for my group's ping pong ball shooter, as well as sharing my group's experience with the creation of a game using cardboard in Practical 4!

Operating Principle and Mechanism Design

When Mr Chua first mentioned that the topic of our lesson for the week was Mechanism Design and Operating Principle, I had a rough idea of what we would be learning for the Mechanism Design part, but when it came to Operating Principle, I was completely clueless. Firstly, we learnt about what Operating Principle meant, and how it was applied in our everyday life. Operating Principle, in simple terms, basically meant how things operated, or how they worked/functioned. For example, most devices are designed based on principles that are either mechanical, electrical or chemical, such as in certain pumps such as centrifugal pumps, where their Operating Principle is imparting energy to the liquid by means of a centrifugal force from the impeller. 

This made me think about our group's design, and the Operating Principle behind it. With our deodorant/mosquito repellent can, our main operating principle would have been the transfer of mass from a region of high pressure to a region of low pressure, being the inside of the can to the outside of the can, as well as the chemical conversion reaction between solid and gaseous phase as our chemical product changed from powder form to gaseous form!

Next, we went through the concept of Mechanism Design. Mechanism refers to something that transforms forces and movement into a desired set of output forces and movement. I roughly knew what a mechanism was and what it meant, and so learning this was not too difficult for me. The main 6 mechanisms that we would have to know to use in functioning prototypes were:

• Actuators
• Cams
• Gears
• Levers
• Ratchets
• Springs

Even with knowing what some of these mechanisms were, I still did not know what some of them were, such as actuators and cams.

Next, our group was tasked with coming up with a shooting and load mechanism for an original design for a ping pong ball shooter. After discussing for a while, our group came up with the following design:

Our ping pong ball shooter would have been two-sided, being able to shoot 2 balls at once, with one coming out from each side of the shooter. We first thought of how we could increase the amount of balls being fired, and so we eventually settled on this design! We also came up with the operating principle behind both the propulsion of the ball, as well as the loading of the ball, being:

This lesson was rather informative, and I believe that I will be making good use of the information when creating our prototype for our actual product! W also had to apply what we learnt in the next practical, being Practical 4...

Practical 4

Practical 4 was titled "Game Design with Cardboard", and when I saw that title, I knew that it would be extremely fun. The previous practical involving cardboard, Practical 2, was an absolute blast to carry out, as my team and I were able to coordinate incredibly well to create a cardboard model that looked absolutely great! Practical 4 was actually quite similar to Practical 2 in a way, as we would still be required to create some sort of cardboard model, but this time, it would have to be a functional "game" that would allow a marble to remain in constant motion for at least 30 seconds, all while making use of several of the mechanisms that we learnt during our lesson on mechanisms!

Going into the practical, our group had actually met once before, although it was only for a short few minutes to discuss what we would be doing for the practical. After brainstorming for a while, we settled on two main ideas for our design. We first came up with a design for a pinball machine made out of cardboard, but after realising that it would have been very difficult to make, especially within our allocated time of 2.5 hours, we decided not to go with that idea, but while thinking of some games that make use of mechanisms, my groupmate had the fantastic idea of creating a simple foosball table, and with that, we were done discussing for the day 😃

On the day of the actual practical, my group already had a rough idea what to make, and how it would look like in the end, and thus, our process of creating the foosball table was relatively smooth and easy!

First, we created a base for our foosball table, being made out of 2 pieces of cardboard to reinforce the base, as we did not want it to fall apart after several rounds were played.

Creating our base for the foosball table

Next, we made small cardboard cutouts men to use as our players for the game.

One cardboard "player"

Several of the cardboard "players"

We also prepared some sticks made out of skewers to put our cardboard cutouts onto, and we pasted one on each side of the skewer to reinforce the cardboard cutouts.

The stick that players would hold before (left) and after (right) securing them

Our cardboard cutouts after being pasted onto the sticks

In addition to this, we also made handles for players to hold onto when they were holding the sticks, while also acting as limits to how far/close they could push/pull the sticks, similar to a real foosball table.

Some handles being made for our sticks

After we made all of the pieces for our foosball table, we added some finishing touches, such as cutting out goals for both sides to create a designated area for the players to score, drawing out the court for the base of the table, and creating walls with holes to insert the sticks into at the sides of the table!

Drawing out the court for our foosball table

Creating goals for both sides

Finally, we put all the pieces of our game together to create an authentic looking foosball table!

Our final foosball table game

here's a quick video of our foosball game in operation!

Overall, I really do think that my team did a really great job for this practical! Our final product not only looked pretty good for the time restriction, and it was very functional as well! I really did enjoy this process of creating our product, and I would like to thank my group mates for this chance to create our product, the process was much smoother because of them! 😁