For the Olin course Introduction to Mechanical Prototyping, I was tasked with creating an ‘automata,’ a mechanism housed inside a decorative box that, when activated by turning a crank, has a moving element.
I decided to base my design on a familiar scene in my parents’ driveway: A raccoon wiggling around in a trash can searching for food.
I designed this automata in SolidWorks so that the mechanism could be activated by turning a crank. When someone turned the crank, two linkages turned the circular motion into horizontal angular movement, so the raccoon attached to the linkage would wiggle from side to side as if rummaging for trash.
The box and linkages were laser cut out of hardboard, and the raccoon was 3D printed. The linkages were assembled using dowels and spacers and constrained with super glue.
