This is the final post for my Humanities and Arts Practicum!
The technical concept of my design was inspired by the music toy box and kaleidoscope: the toys of my childhood. This purely mechanical construction was powered by the winding mechanism with the key placed outside of the wooden box. Therefore, the key’s release produced the torque that was rotating the pre-installed drum which was acting as a leading pulley. Its motion was making secondary pullies rotate self-made semi-transparent resin disks with some pattern while being lightened up from the bottom with motion-sensing LEDs.
Despite the many obstacles I faced, I was able to learn a crucial engineering skill – consistency. Throughout the iterative self-directed process I tried many different thing for both mechanisms of action and disks design and manufacturing. I stopped on the design which implemented the usage of the pulleys as the main mechanism of action. The leading pulley was built in to the bought winding mechanism while the secondary pulleys were 3d printed in the WPI Prototyping lab based on my own CAD model.

In the figure below you can see 4 generations of the secondary pulleys I came up with.

Unfortunately, I don’t currently have any pictures of the discs I came up with. However, I will update this report with new figures as soon as I have a chance to do so.

Here is the final video of my project with detailing on the leading mechanism:

I greatly appreciate the unique experience I gained in this class and give my gratitude to Professor Josh Rosenstock and my classmates! You truly gave me an inspiration to not give up and move forwards despite all the difficulties I faced as well as very useful advices !