Day 13 - Design the Dynamo

Based on yesterday's review of mechanical advantage, you should have a refreshed sense for how to use elements of simple machines to drive your dynamo. Today you need to draw out your design. Our motor hardware will be mountable using brackets specific for M3 motor mounting, and we have some upcyclable book stands we can repurpose as needed. If your team would like to bring in a board or other mounting surface, that's fine - talk it out as a group and decide how you want to proceed.

Unfortunately, TinkerCad's resolution appears limited to the nearest millimeter, but our collars will need to be accurate to the nearest tenth of a millimeter if we can get that resolution. For that, we'll need different software and for licensing reasons that software won't be available to us until January. In the meantime we should be able to design everything else and manufacture our collars as the last step prior to final assembly and testing.

Today, then, I need you to draw out your dynamo design. Is it a design that should have a carrying strap? Should it be enclosable in its own bag? Should it attach to a backpack or a bicycle? Should it attach to a shoe? Discuss your options and start figuring out the materials you will need to assemble these. Some supplies I have here and you are welcome to use, but you should also think creatively about spare objects you own that are ready to be upcycled because they're on their way to the trash bin anyhow. Be innovative in your approach to this design!

coil

a layered loop of conductive material (such as copper); current through this loop will produce a magnetic field

commutator

a cylinder with a break in it such that as it spins it keeps breaking the circuit for a moment to allow a reversal of current

current

in electronics, it is the movement of electrons through a circuit; this movement can be direct (flow) or alternating (vibration)

dynamo

a generator that converts movement (mechanical energy) into electricity (electrical energy)

electromagnetism

the physics invovled with the flow of electrons and their magnetic fields

generator

in engineering, a generator is any device that outputs energy in a specific form (often electricity)

magnetic field

the accumulation of force from millions of electrons aligned in the same direction, making the substance behave like an ionic element