Kinetic Sculpture - Observatory

About

Challenged to make a kinetic sculpture using a variety of mechanisms for the third project of my Mechanical Prototyping class, my team and I built a telescope observatory. The back disk rotates, representing the immensity of the universe, the telescope both tracks within the observatory and has an inner barrel that moves in and out, and a representation of the paradigm shift from religion to science as god's hand from Creation of Adam moves back and forth against a nebula. The required integrated mechanisms were:

• Chain/Belt Drive
• 4 Bar Linkage
• Slot Slider
• Cam & Follower
• 2 Sets of Gears

All to be driven off a single 12V DC motor.

I mainly contributed to the design of the 4 bar linkage and cam follower, which drive the telescope's sweeping motion and the in-and-out motion of the inner barrel of the telescope. Along with helping out in the other mechanisms, I also worked a lot on integration and assembly, ensuring it actually could be assembly and we had no CADed ourselves into an impossible to build box.

As this was for a class, a more in depth report can be found here.

Skills

• Solidworks - Design, animation, and rendering was done in Solidworks
• Shopbot - Used to cut plywood for the main box
• SLA Printing - Used to print the more precise internal parts and gears
• FDM Printing - Used to print larger, more geometric parts and the dome
• CNC Plasma Cutter - Used to cut sheet metal for gussets and small metal parts
• Illustrator - Decomposed image into vector traces to be used as sketches in Solidworks

Team

• Carlos Godinez
• Julia Benton
• Deborah Bowen
• Griffin DiParlo