Friday, March 11, 2011

Senior Project Update

Three days ago I finally made some huge progress on my senior project.  I recently ordered 12 worm screw dc motors off of ebay and on Tuesday they came in the mail!  Being very excited I immediately made my way over to Home Depot to get myself a new power drill, a pair of pliers, and a 2 by 4.  My plan was to make a bunch of equilateral triangles.  That means all of the corners were going to have to be 60º.  Since I was home I could use my parents table saw to cut the 2 by 4 into triangles.

Triangle Blocks
Lots of Triangle Blocks
After cutting the triangles my mom, my friend Scott, and I sanded all the sides and slightly rounded the corners.

Triangle Blocks and Motor
Triangle Blocks and Motor with Worm Screw
I then wanted to see how the motors would attach to the wood.  I drilled a hole in the approximate center of the wood block and then screwed the worm screw motor into the hole on the block.  It worked out even better than I imagined.  Check out the image below.
Triangle Block Attached to Motor
Triangle Block Attached to Motor with Worm Screw
Here is a video of how it works:

The motor above will just be my test motor.  Since I have 13 motors I have 3 that I can do pretty much whatever with since I'm going to try to stick to 10 motors in my installation.  I came up with the idea of using triangle blocks, because now I can use the three sides to attach my three printer cartridges that will eventually be filled up with ink and then used to spit out ink all over the room.  I am then going to paint all of the wooden triangles white and soon you will see what that looks like.  I will also post sketches of how these motors will be attached in the final project.

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