Perpetual Motion Machine Report Part 1

What a fun, interesting, and frustrating project. For everything that went right, 3 things went wrong but I am very happy with how it all turned out.

Budget:

I was far below my allowed budget! I was able to build it all for $110 and a lot of man hours!

Process

There were many steps to completing my project

  1. Ideation: I chose perpetual motion machine because the idea of them has always enthralled me and Leonardo Da Vinci is one of the main reasons that I am an engineer.
  2. Design: I came up with a few different Ideas, but wood working while integrating tools was the one I liked the best and ended up going with.
  3. Materials: I needed an assortment of materials to build my project, and more importantly tools
  4. I was able to get all of that back home in Parker using some of my Dad’s power tools
  5. Build
    1. Gather Materials
    2. Sand Materials
    3. Measure and Mark
    4. Saw out model piece
    5. Use model to make the rest to eliminate human error
    6. Router out extra wood, so it fits like a puzzle
    7. Sand down all ridges
    8. Drill 3/8 bolt hole
    9. Make cross bars
    10. Router crossbars
    11. Drill Hammers
    12. Glue pieces and fasten with eye bots to dry
    13. ROuter along all edges to make it look very professional
    14. Make small and large model Trapezoids
    15. Make all remaining from model
    16. Glue trapezoids together
    17. Pre-drill holes into trapezoid blocks
    18. Drill in trapezoid Blocks
    19. Fill cracks with wood Putty
    20. Attach hammers
    21. Measure height
    22. Design stand
    23. Router Base
    24. Router legs
    25. Use a spade bit to drill hole for dowel
    26. Insert dowel

These steps seem simple and straightforward but there were many hiccups. I needed to router first so that there was enough flat space for the tool itself, so I had to take it almost all the way apart. The eye bolt length was the total length, not the threaded part so they were too short. The router had issues staying in place so one piece was totally destroyed. The angle of the legs was off so I had to remake them. The small dowel broke. One of the hammer handles was too thin and broke. The trapezoids were too large and interfered so they had to be remade. Other than that though, it was really a lot of fun

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1 Comment. Leave new

  • Faisal Al Balushi
    May 8, 2017 3:30 pm

    Hi Levi. This was one of my favorite projects, I really liked the inspiration and the idea behind it. The final product gives a very close demonstration to what you had in mind, also I like the final finish you have on it and the level of accuracy you made it to is really good. Great job on laying down the procedure and all the parts you used!

    Reply

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