Puzzle Design Process: Midterm Portfolio Review

Problem Statement

A local office furniture manufacturing company throws away tens of thousands of scrap 3⁄4” hardwood cubes that result from its furniture construction processes. The material is expensive, and the scrap represents a sizeable loss of profit.

Design Statement
Fine Office Furniture, Inc. would like to return value to its waste product by using it as the raw material for desktop novelty items that will be sold on the showroom floor. Design, build, test, document, and present a three-dimensional puzzle system that is made from the scrap hardwood cubes. The puzzle system must provide an appropriate degree of challenge to high school students.

Criteria

1. The puzzle must be fabricated from 27 – 3⁄4′′ hardwood cubes.
   
2. Thepuzzlesystemmustcontainexactlyfivepuzzleparts.
   
3. Eachindividualpuzzlepartmustconsistofatleastfour,butnomorethansix hardwood cubes that are permanently attached to each other.
   
4. Notwopuzzlepartscanbethesame.
   
5. Thefivepuzzlepartsmustassembletoforma21⁄4′′cube.
   
6. Somepuzzlepartsshouldinterlock.
   
7. Thepuzzleshouldrequirehighschoolstudentsanaverageof______minutes/ seconds to solve. (Fill in your target solution time.)
   

SubmittalCreate a project portfolio to include the following:

• Design Process Description, summarizing your work during each step of the design process
• Documentation, include written work, sketches, CAD parts, images, etc. to support your discussion. Specifically, documentation of:
• Brainstorm sketches of all possible part combos
• Cake layers for both designs
• Choice design, with explanation of why this is the best choice
• Multi-view for each part of final design
• Assemblage of one part from your partner's multi-view sketch
• CAD parts of final design

Survey

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Inventor Resources

If you're feeling ambitious, you've already created all five parts in Inventor, and you're ready to move on, you can create an assembly and drawing of your puzzle parts. This video gives a detailed explanation on how to do just that. (Please note that the cubes he is using in the video are 1/2", unlike our 3/4" cubes.)

Learning from videos like this can be incredibly helpful! Do some Googling of your own to find Inventor resources that help answer any questions that you may have.

Cube Quality Control

Today’s consumers are constantly trying to judge the quality of products. But what is quality? How and by whom is quality determined? Some would say the designer creates specifications, which in turn dictate the quality of a product. That quality is also based on the acceptable value of a part within a whole product. Statistics are commonly used in manufacturing processes to control and maintain quality.

This activity will allow you to apply statistics in order to analyze and determine the quality (as measured by the consistency of the size) of wooden cubes. The wooden cubes will be used in the upcoming Puzzle Cube Challenge. You will design and construct a puzzle cube as part of the challenge. The consistency in size of the wooden cubes will affect the quality of your final product.
 

Equipment

·         Engineering notebook

·         Pencil

·         Dial caliper

·         27 wooden cubes per student

 

Procedure

  

1. Each of you will receive a set of 27 wooden cubes (3/4 in.). Label each cube (1 through 27) lightly in pencil. Measure the side length of each block along the grain. When taking a measurement, position the block so the caliper measuring surfaces are touching the end grain faces. Record the measurements to create a data set. For this analysis a precision of .001 is necessary; therefore, record each measurement to the nearest one thousandth of an inch (.001 in).

2. Use Excel to perform a statistical analysis of the data to determine each of the following: Mean, Median, Mode, and Standard Deviation.                   

Create a histogram to represent the data. Use seven to ten class intervals (bin values). Be sure to label your axes and define units where appropriate.

 

 3.    Does your data appear to be normally distributed? Justify your answer.

 

 

 

 

  

Fling Machine

Ms. L's Fling Machine

There are many ways to solve a problem. Sometimes it is as simple as applying a piece of duct tape. Other times it takes months or years for a product to progress from an idea into full-scale production. Work with a partner to design and build a device to launch a cotton ball and send it as far as possible. 

Your team may receive points for the following.

• Creativity: Up to 10 points for creativity in the design and use of materials.
• Teamwork: Up to 10 points for how well your team works together.
• Performance: Using the landing point of the cotton ball that was propelled the furthest from the launch device, 2 points for each inch between the device and the point at which the cotton ball lands.

Analyze the cotton ball travel distance data that you collected, the design of your machine, and your effectiveness as a team. If you had the opportunity to optimize your design, what would you do differently? How could you improve the effectiveness of your team? Given the constraints, how do you feel teams solved the problem of building a fling machine?

Team	Distance
Juan & Catherine	68.5"
Austyn & Craig	37"
Ben & Jake	-14.25"
Diana & Archit	110.25"
Ganesh & Vijay	35"
Ashab & Matt	180" / -19"
Gagan & Alvin	238"
Sukjit & Amijot	0"
Sasha & William	12.25"
Katie & Sonia	-.75"
Meera & Sachi	150"
Pallavi & Austin	56.5"
Ryan & Paras	372.25"

Unit Conversion

Modern civilization cannot exist without measurement systems. Measurements are everywhere, and you use them every day. Every time you buy gas, check the outside temperature, or step on a weight scale, measurements are used to represent a quantity. The abilities to conduct, record, and convert measurements are necessary to understand our technological world and to carry on the business of living. Engineers of all disciplines are constantly required to work with measurements of a variety of quantities – length, area, volume, mass, force, time, temperature, electric current, etc. It is often necessary to be able to express those measurements in different units.

Research, explore, and develop your own understanding of unit conversion. Then, work with a team to create a lesson that shares what you learned with the class. Your lesson should make us think and be fun!

Your lesson must cover:

• The purpose of unit conversion
• Conversion factor formula
• Conversion of units in both SI and US Systems
• How to write numbers in the SI System
• Dimensional analysis
• Unit prefixes
• Rules of exponents
• Precision versus accuracy
• Significant figures

Essential Question:

What would happen if engineers did not follow accepted dimensioning standards and guidelines but, instead, used their own individual dimensioning methods?

Color Theory

Designers choose specific colors to use in their design, and we call that a color scheme. Color theory is having the knowledge to mix colors and put colors together in a way that is right for your design. You will spend this week exploring colors all around you!

Research color schemes (monochromatic colors, analogous colors, complementary colors, triadic colors, and split-complementary) and color theory. Create a new blog post that addresses these points:

• define color scheme
• define and show examples of each type of color scheme
• monochromatic
• analogous
• complementary
• triadic
• split-complementary
•  define and show examples of 3 primary, 3 secondary, and 6 tertiary colors

Curious how we'll be using color next week? Check out this blog post from Modern Mechanix to get a preview.

Multi-View Sketching

You’ve practiced different techniques for sketching objects so that they appear to have a three-dimensional quality. These techniques are excellent for quickly communicating ideas to both technical and non-technical people. Those who make their living building ideas require a different type of drawing format. A multi-view sketch, also referred to as an orthographic projection sketch, is the standard sketch format used by engineers to communicate ideas to professionals in the building trades.

Study various objects to identify their surfaces for the top, front, and right side views. Share your multi-view drawings in a post.