h a l f b a k e r yContrary to popular belief
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Compliant mechanisms utilize so called "soft parts"
instead
of linkages, cotter pins, two part hinges etc. Not only are
they simpler, but there can be some advantages. The link
describes these things. (this idea won't make much sense
unless you watch the video)
So the idea is to have the
competitors design common
mechanical devices, from household appliances to
vehicles, even aircraft, using the minimum amount of
parts
possible. The competitors might for instance, ride their
motorcycle onto the stage and say "My motorcycle runs
on
gas, has 3 gears and has only 6 parts." Next entrant
might
say "I made a blender with 2 parts."
A "part" being a contiguous piece of whatever material
shaped such that it might do several jobs rather than just
a
lot of different parts each doing a separate job, which is
how things are generally made.
A car with 14 parts that does everything a regular car
with
its thousands of parts does? That would be quite an
accomplishment, and seeing how they did it would be
some
interesting stuff. Obviously much of what's innovated to
do this would let itself to being applied to the state of
the
art for that item's manufacture.
The linked video shows the general idea.
Compliant mechanisms
https://www.youtube...watch?v=97t7Xj_iBv0
[doctorremulac3, Aug 29 2020]
1-piece door-handle mechanism
https://all3dp.com/...aterial-mechanisms/
3D-printed [neutrinos_shadow, Aug 31 2020]
A little more to the point description.
https://www.youtube...watch?v=PgDJlLqeTdo
Guys like us with 3D printers know that making crazy stuff is pretty addicting. [doctorremulac3, Sep 01 2020]
[link]
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This reminds me of my attempt to cheat at a high-school
design/technology contest by building a model bridge out of a
length of elastic: the rules said the bridge must bear a load
without breaking, not that it must hold the the load steady. |
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I heard a story about some nuclear scientist who when asked
how to get some percentage of particle interaction,
probability factor or some such, threw a bunch of toothpicks
on the ground and said "Count where they overlap." Point is,
simple ways of doing things can be pretty clever. |
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Then there's the old wadding up a piece of paper, chucking
it and saying "It's a missile." |
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Don't make it a "contest" to
make engineers work for free,
especially not a contest based around an "idea" that
you saw in a video. Magic doesn't work like that. Or,
make the contest original, i.e. make appliances from
fishbones carved into nanoscale shapes then used
as 3D-printing powder. |
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So a homogeneous material if shaped correctly (on the correct scale) can control properties of charge, magnetism?
In my mind heterogeneous materials will always be needed. Diversity* is a founding block of complexity. |
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*even if the ultimate Plank fundamental is a 'Lego' single entity. |
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//So a homogeneous material if shaped
correctly (on the correct scale) can control
properties of charge, magnetism?// |
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I wouldnt' think so, but maybe somebody could prove
me wrong and create some new material that does
just that somehow. |
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"have a contest for engineers to make better x" is not a new idea. Mixing it with "via this one mechanism" doesn't make it any better. |
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Being made with fewer parts doesn't necessarily
mean better. Might barely get the job done, but
the
mechanisms arrived at might be interesting. For
instance, if somebody said they made a
blender with only two parts you wouldn't be
curious
about how they did it? |
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Did you watch the video? Kind of have to for this to
make sense. If you still hate it, that's fine, but you
do need to check the link first to get the idea. |
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I think this would at the very least a cool
assignment for engineering students. Try to merge
two jobs into one part in a given mechanism. |
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Maybe that's a better way to express this. Taking
an assigned mechanism, an assembly line for
instance, have a parts
elimination competition. Competitor #1 eliminated
4 parts, #2 eliminated 6 parts, the winner
eliminated 12 parts. |
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I think it depends on how you define "one part". Eg: the
"pliers" in the video could be said to have 4 parts. They are
made at the same time from the same material and are
joined together, so making it that way only removes the
"assembly" part of the construction (which is fair enough).
It could also be extended down to an atomic level: is a
"doped" area of a silicon chip considered a different part to
the un-doped area next to it? It has different properties,
does different things... |
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Neut, your link makes my point. See how clever was that
simplified door lock mechanism was? A competition to do
this sort of thing, I'm thinking for engineering courses in
college, would be amazingly interesting. |
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Sninctown, I think you were in a bad mood when you put
snarky quotation marks around the word "idea" when
referring to this. Compliant mechanisms are a very clear
idea, not a magic "idea". Pretty amazingly brilliant one at
that. |
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A competition to take an existing mechanism like a door
handle mechanism and come up with the thing shown in
neut's link would be amazingly interesting to anybody
with a mind towards engineering and design of
mechanisms. |
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I might suggest this to some folks at MIT and
Stanford. |
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The door handle, pliers and hinges and pantograph shown in the link are made from many small pieces welded together, since that is the very nature of 3D printing. |
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My car has only 6 parts: 4 wheels, engine and bodywork. |
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Well, everything's made of atoms I guess. |
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Your car is made of thousands of parts. A part as referred to
here is a contiguous piece of material, like the door
handle in the link. |
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Thought it was a pretty simple concept. |
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What if two separate parts are welded together? |
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What if they are riveted together? |
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What if they are sellotaped together? |
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What if they are merely resting on top of one another? |
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Then it's not one piece molded with a simple one
step process. |
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Really, watch the video before commenting further. |
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Right, but many parts are not moulded, but are fabricated, or machined, or carved, or even grown to shape (like the knees of wooden warships). |
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I'm just trying to push at the edges of what defines a "single part" because its the ill-defined edges that make a competition or a specification fail or succeed. |
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1- The students are given a mechanism like the
doorknob. |
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2- They’re told it can only be injection molded
parts, but for ease of application 3D printing will
be used, but the part will need to be injection
moldable. |
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3- The students submit their design and the
number of 3D parts needed to create it. No
fasteners allowed, snap together only. Fewest
parts win. |
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The shown door latch would win over a design
that had two parts that snapped together. |
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Perhaps change it from "least number of parts" to "least
number of steps to finish"? The advantage of the
printed/injection-molded parts is mostly removing some
assembly steps. (I have heard about "multi-step" injection
molding, basically doing a simple assembly step inside the
mold.) |
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//Perhaps change it from "least number of
parts" to "least number of steps to finish"?// |
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Making a simpler mechanism can be a complicated
process. Why not make a game of it? |
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What? That was the least amount of parts I could use to express my love of this idea.
I would excel at this. Why the hell wasn't it a thing when I was still young enough to participate?! |
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I swear: If I ever get to launch any of the inventions I haven't disclosed ,(which I've got kicking around the back of my head), They will all be dis-assemblable and re-assemblable using a single tool attached to the invention itself. |
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It also depends on the criterion for specifying the mechanism. For example, that 3D printed door knob seems very complex to me with all those little lattice holes and connections. Better to have the door shaped so that it wedges very slightly into the door frame. Then cut a hole in the door so you can reach through the hole to tug the door free of the frame. There, a -1 part door handle (consisting of a hole, the removed part, hence having a negative number of components) |
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I know you're probably kidding because that's just a
wedged
shut door, but looking at it from a
different angle like that might be result in an
interesting solution. |
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So thinking along the lines of wedged shut doors,
have
one section of the door that's thinner and
therefore flexible but extends in an arc shape out
of the
rectangular door shape
into a vertical notch in the door jam. You push that
section it flexes and pulls out of the recession in
the door frame opening the door. The door jam has
a slope up to the notch portion that pushes the
flexible part to compress it until it hits the notch,
at which time it clicks into place. |
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This simple design replaces a push bar with all its
cost, dozen of components etc. Plus it might look
better as well. |
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That's a zero additional component design. |
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To be multidimensional the turning of the door knob has to do something else. Simple one dimensional is still good, until you need exponential development. |
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Almost NEJAB - except it's the "jam" itself which needs an
extra "b". |
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... and couldn't the title of this idea be built better with fewer
parts? |
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