User:Yuchen.li94/Project 2

My Instructor's course page which points to this.

Project Preference
The Escher Demo Project

Problem Statement
The illusion should last longer. New designs for tracks and background should be generated in order to produce more fun illusion.

Week 1 Narrative
The background was redesigned. It is similar to the background that we have previously. However, instead of tilting one side of the bottom board, the entire bottom board is tilted, which means that there is only one corner contacting the ground. This background design allows the marbles to roll and accelerate in different directions.



In order to take the advantage of the new design of the background, redesigned track was made during last week after the group meeting. Due to the flexibility and plasticity, foamed plastic board was used to make the track in our project.

The simple test that show how the marble rolls in the new background was conducted.

Through this test, the expected illusion was shown but there are still problems.

1. The scraps of the track may stop marble occasionally.

2. The acceleration of the marble rolling on the track was not obvious enough.

3. The time of the illusion occurring is too short - it is not fun enough.

Next steps:
1. Design the new background to accommodate Sunny's new track design. 2. Polishing the track so that the marble can roll smoothly. 3. Rebuild a new prototype.

Week 2 Narrative
In the past week, Autodesk Inventor has been used to create the technical drawing of our final background structure. The basic design of the background has not been changed, however, the dimensions of the final product was determined by our anticipation, and the first technical drawing was finished.

Creating Technical Drawing with Autodesk Inventor

 * 1) Using 2D sketch to create a rectangle and stretch it to a board with thickness of 6mm
 * 2) Using 2D sketch to draw two rectangles with the width of 6mm and stretch it up to 40 cm
 * 3) Creating a workplane as the ground level. (The Demo for drawing workplane in Inventor)
 * 4) Adding a cylinder at the bottom
 * 5) Cutting the extra part of the cylinder under the workplane

Potential New materials for the "walls" of the background

 * Illustration board for drawing class (in HCC bookstore)
 * White cardboard box
 * Thinner "Super Tuff-R" board (thickness < 1/2 inch)

Next step

 * 1) Refine the technical drawing with right dimensions
 * 2) Adding tracks in the background
 * 3) Building the final product

Week 3 Narrative
During this week, all the parts made by Autodesk Inventor previously were assembled. All the necessary technical drawings were produced electronically. Although there are still issues about assembling tracks and background, we are confident that the size of the track will work with the background and marble can roll as we expect.

Parts assembling
1 Making all parts with Inventor separately and save them as ipt file.

Potential problem

 * Assembling the "v" track
 * Timing issues (the final product may not be delivered on time due to the lack of the material)
 * Since foam plastic boards are not enough for our project, illustration boards will be used; however, it

Next steps

 * Building the actual final product
 * Finishing the wiki group documentation
 * Filming the new illusion

Week 4 Narrative
During the past week, the second the prototype was built upon the first prototype. The bottom board of the first prototype has been enhanced to accommodate the longer track. The new prototype was built according to the technical drawing, however, the real prototype has slightly different dimensions. In addition to building, the rolling of the marble was tested in the new track and the illusion was filmed.

Enhancing the background
1. Using a utility knife to cut out a 40cm*30cm board 2. Gluing two plastic boards at the back in order to match the board to the previous prototype 3. New enhanced bottom

Filming illusion and problems
Marble rolls off the track due to the bouncing, the shortage of the length of the blocks, and the obstacles on the track.(video)

Marble rolls up against gravity.(video)

Next steps

 * 1) Refining or polish the track so the marble will not get stopped.
 * 2) Recalculate the distance between blocks in order to limit the bouncing of the marble.
 * 3) Extending the entire background so the camera can film the illusion within the background.
 * 4) Using plastic and metal marbles to do the same test again and find out the difference