Prior to the keyhole issues, Jack and I were designing the gears overall structure of the inner mechanism. We spent about two classes printing out the bevel gear, because we wanted to get the scaling correct. We also created the laser cut gears, but ran into some trouble due to the laser cutting taking too long for one class. The only other issue that we faced was the camera not uploading to the online studio. Therefore I am just now posting the reports for these classes.

For the past few classes, Ryan and I took measures to adjust and fix the keyhole. The keyhole had been previously designed to fit in the gear, but the  keyhole was a couple of millimeters to large to fit in the gear. Once we have fit the keyhole in properly, we will finish the initial gear design and move forward to the working prototype.

Today in class I worked to form a mechanism to raise and lower the table in my shared project with Jack. I worked to form the two sets of the “X” legs. I improved upon the mobility of the "X", and worked to make the model track. I also explored the idea of incorporating wheels to make the mobility even better, so it will function in the slots. Next class I will begin to work on a track with slots, so that the mechanism can rest in place safely.

Today in class, I worked on a small 3d printed keyhole to fit inside of the gears. The keyhole will allow for us to insert a rotation pole securely in the gears. It will then attach to the outside hand crank, and the other gears that lift up out table. Next class, I will work with Jack to put it together, and then connect the gears to the lifting mechanism.

Our project went through many designs and idea changes as the semester went on. First, it was simply chairs that fit together to make a seamless line of chairs. We then decided that four chairs creating a circle would be a better design for group projects because of communication reasons, but still the chairs would only have one use of being simply chairs. We went through the process of designing the chairs on Rhino, laser cutting all the pieces, and fine tuning the design before the again changing the idea. The space underneath the chairs was given a purpose. We wanted kids to be able to crawl beneath the seats to escape the environment and just have a fun space to relax. Cut outs we added to the sides for movement between the chairs and to the top in fun shapes for light to shine through. Instead of having all four chairs look very similar in design we thought that two having the cut outs on the top and two having lights wired into the bottom would add variety. Unfortunately because the lights were wired by hand they took up much more space than originally planned. We flipped the top to have the lights the main focus and hid the wires underneath the seat, reversing or idea of lights being on the bottom to light up the hiding space for children. Finally, we painted the chairs in pastel colors to make then more kid friendly and fun to look at.  While the final design is not to scale, not matching the design we hoped to have, and not exactly picture perfect, it is still a good representative of the process we went through and allows for further development.

Yesterday Matt and I had a unproductive due to waiting in line for the lazer cutter and a mix up with the format of a design. Next class we hope to be able to lazer cut and assemble our product so we can add final touches like LED lights and cushions. 

Today I finished designing and fine tuning the final design of our chair. We designed to leave the bottom portion of the chair open as a crawl space. Two of the four seats while have patterns cut out, stars and clouds, to allow light to come through; the other two will have colorful lights wired into the bottom of the seat. Next class we will lazer cut them and glue the pieces together. 

Today me and leela worked on improving one certain prototype I went to expand and improve our slide prototype and leela improved the other prototype, above is a sketch of another slide idea