MAE 3193: Mechanical Systems Design

In MAE 3193, students enhanced both their technical and programmatic skills. Student’s primary project was a version of a Rube-Goldberg machine and have 10 teams work together within a System-of-Systems (SoS). The requirements were as follows…

Each team used 3 mechanisms.
All 10 teams utilized 20 unique mechanisms as a hole.
All teams had to have a golf ball pass from their first mechanism to their last within 15 seconds, and be able to demonstrate that 15 seconds had passed autonomously.

Their individual projects were to create a mechanism to help someone without use of their hands utilize a screwdriver, wrench, saw, and drill. This was the only requirement for the design.

For my group’s primary project, Team Alpha, our three mechanisms were an aerodynamic lift, suspension bridge, and worm gear elevator. I designed half the suspension bridge and the aerodynamic lift, one group member designed the other half of the suspension bridge and the worm gear elevator, and the third group member was another opinion for our design choices. Both the first group member and I worked on calibrating and the code for the sensors and an LED display that showed the timing of our subsystem. A big part of the points to be given out was the “WOW” factor, which was basically aesthetic appeal, and ours was that we reconstructed New York City.

Our first mechanism, the aerodynamic lift, worked as a self-resetting trap door that dropped a ball we received from the team before us into a funnel within a skyscraper, as we became too unrealistic with what our original plan was. The suspension bridge transported the ball from the bottom of the first mechanism to the bottom of the third mechanism, the worm gear elevator. The worm gear elevator utilized a Arduino Uno and sensors to activate a motor and transport the ball up to the subsystem after us.

The following are some videos of the testing/final results and group photos.

Test video before the final presentation.

A run during the final testing period, but not the actual test. Was too focused on it working to record it while the run through happened.

There were many lessons learned from this project. Although we had good scheduling, risk identification, and KPI’s for the project, it was eye-opening to see how many things can go wrong that are unforeseen running a SoS.