My living room (construction zone)

This is my living room this evening...

This is a shelf I'm building. The tan colored pieces are reclaimed from a pine twin size bed, the brown piece in the middle is one of the shelves.

I modeled the design in sketchup..

I didn't design it really, it designed itself. This was the best way to arrange the pieces of wood that I had. To get the maximum shelf.

I was concerned about the size and other furniture getting moved into our living room...so I modeled that too...(I tell myself it was good practice since I couldn't build the shelf saturday because it was raining...)

I made the walls transparent because I kept getting stuck in them. :)

It looks like it fits in this picture, but in real life, in the room (being assembled) it looks Massive!

We are really looking forward to this new arrangement and having more shelving.

I was really hoping to be done tonight, but the rain fouled up my plans again.

Simplified Mechanical System Part 4

There is one more important component.

What to bolt the brackets to?
How about a standardized grid of holes, of specified diameter...

Like this...

There is one more component I came up with early on. 

A cam arm. Cams are used to do lots of things and it seemed like it would be easy to model so...

So there you have it. The Simplified Mechanical System... 

I will soon send these models to Google's 3d Warehouse, and also post them here as well. 

I would love to build some of these components, but I haven't gotten a chance yet. 

This system would be particularly useful if you wanted to prototype something (much like the arduino). You could prototype in wood or plastic, then for final assembly build it in metal. 

It shares alot in common with Makerbeam and Contraptor and MicroRax and Vex and of course where I got my start mechanically... Lego Technics

Simplified Mechanical System Part 3

This is where it gets interesting. :)

We now have a shaft we can mount a bearing to and hold the bearing in place. Without any custom machining. But what holds the bearing? This does..

This is a bracket with a bearing placed in it. 

Here are two brackets capturing a bearing..

You then can hold the brackets with a stationary bracket..

But there's another type of bracket that is useful...

The axle bracket.

This bracket has the 8mm D-profile cut into the middle. This bracket can either hold a shaft stationary to your assembly. Or it can engage a shaft that is made to rotate smoothly by riding in a set of bearings..

Such as here in my trebuchet model. 

But either of these brackets can be used for yet another purpose. Given any gear or pulley. If you can center it up properly and drill your holes right. You can bolt any gear or pulley or sprocket to one of these brackets. 

The possibilities are endless. 

Simplified Mechanical System Part 2

Secondly we need a shaft/axle that will work for the following functions (as mentioned previously)..


1. They hold components where they need to be.  But they also need to be held in place on the shaft.
2. Shafts give various components a common rotational axis.
3. Shafts transmit motion from one component to another

Let's tackle number three first.

A D-profile shaft will allow components to spin on the shaft, as well as being able to transmit power. Also its easier to go from a store bought shaft to a d-profile, than it is to put a key slot into the shaft. 

But this still doesn't place a component somewhere along the length. 

This is where standards come in again. If your components could be a certain thickness, then maybe we can avoid making a custom shaft, a common design will do for many different setups. 

We can cut concentric slots in the axle of specified width with specific spacing, then we can make our component thickness match those measurements. 

Like this..

Then E-clips hold the components in place along the shaft. 

Kinda like this..

Simplified Mechanical System Part 1

I had an idea. 

I was talking to my brother and as I talked I was frustrated at how hard it was to build things. The biggest problem in my opinion is. Everytime I want to build something, it pretty much always involves some kind of shafts. 

Shafts have several functions: 

1. They hold components where they need to be.  But they also need to be held in place on the shaft.

2. Shafts give various components a common rotational axis. 

3. Shafts transmit motion from one component to another 

If you want to place a component on a shaft and have it perform reliably, it needs to be held in place on the shaft. If you want a component to spin smoothly, then you need a bearing placed on your shaft. The bearing needs to have the same inner diameter as the shaft's outer diameter, within a few thousandths, if not things will vibrate and wobble and all kinds of problems. Most shafts get stacked on with a different diameter for each component. Thats alot of custom machining. 

Borrow from: Wikipedia

I don't have the resources to machine custom shafts each time I have an idea, and I'm not alone in not having them.

Bearings are the next big problem. Some things need to free-spin on shafts and some things need to be engaged on the shaft. Again with each component needing a different inner and outer diameter. 

What's needed is a standard, a system. 

Kinda like the Arduino. Standard shields fit standard sockets with standard pinouts. It works for electronics, it works with Personal computers, PCI cards fit in PCI slots. Serial ATA drives plug into Serial ATA cables. Standards make building things (relatively) simple. (USB has got to be the best example Ever!) 

Then I realized. I've used skate bearings in several things. Skate bearings  are ubiquitous and standardized. Here you can get 100 for $35, $0.35 a piece! 

They have an exactly 8mm inner diameter and 22mm outer diameter, they are 7mm thick. But they don't come with any mounting help, no flange, no bearing block...

So an 8mm shaft will mesh up into a skate bearing exactly. 

Skate bearings are perfect for a simplified mechanical system...