Automata - HW3 9/28/15

I wanted to do something simple and feasible. I was also hoping to create something cute or adorable -- inspiring "aaaw". 

With the little I knew about gears, I knew that when one gear rotates in one direction, the other gear rotates in the opposite direction, so I decided to play with this concept. I thought I could make two things hug, fight, or kiss. Thinking simple, I thought silhouettes of two birds kissing could convey the idea of 'love birds'. 

Since cutting the dowel the last time was a PITA, I decided to laser cut it instead (brilliant idea I thought). Turns out the dowel was rolling around in the laser cutting machine, reducing accuracy. It's also not good for the laser cutter to cut into the metal (who knew). Thus, I used blue tape to tape the dowel to another piece of scrap metal in order to cut through. Good news is that the laser cutter can cut through blue tape no problem! Below is an image of the scrap wood post cut of the dowel. The first set of cuts was off, so I had to repeat it a second time. You can see the burn marks where the dowel was.

This time, I only used the slightest push of hot glue to squeeze out a thin layer to spread on the wood so it wouldn't cause too much friction or bumpiness. Takes a bit of practice to get control of the hot glue gun. For some reason, the hot glue just likes to get around everywhere.

Learning from the previous mistake, and knowing that the birds would have to be stuck on very precisely in order for their pointy beaks to touch each other, I made sure to stick them on with tape first to make adjusting easy. In the end, I didn't even see the need to use hot glue in the end.

What I would change for next time: I would make the teeth of the gears smaller -- maybe 24 teeth instead of 12. This would give me more control over the range of motion, allowing the gears to move in smaller increments. I would use harder wood for the birds -- while the white wood provided a nice contrast against the darker wood background, it was quite ashy and black soot would fall off every time the birds "kissed".