Why this was built and did it achieve the desired mechanism

The oscillatory fan mechanism was built to allow for the oscillatory motion of a fan from point A to point B. The oscillatory motion gives a wide angle of range which increases the fans efficiency at cooling an area. The mechanism consists of a series of gears in a gear box that are connected to a four bar mechanism, allowing for said oscillatory motion. The fan also has a knob which is pushed down to initiate the oscillatory motion, and some have a dial to adjust the pitch of the fan (this is not on the fan for this project).

The fan employs the use of a gear box. Gear boxes are useful for transferring energy from one part of a system to another. Basically, in this project, the gear box consists of a series of 4 gears that help to turn the rotating motion from the motor to the oscillatory motion of the fan’s head. The typical reasons whey gears are used, among other things, are to manipulate the magnitude or direction of torque, and to change speed. There is usually a trade-off between these two, thus for more torque, one will have less speed, and at high speeds, one will have less torque, and vice versa.

The gear mechanism is displayed in the use of the fan, where the motor speeds at some really high rpm value (couldn’t measure with a tachometer, so I researched this value). Since this same motor is used to trigger the fan’s oscillatory motion, the speed has to be decreased through a series of gears, lest the fan spins back and fort at such high speeds to cause it to break. Coincidentally, the decrease in speed causes a corresponding increase in torque, which helps to move the fan’s head via the four bar mechanism crank.