8.4 Iteration

We knew we wanted to make a rowing mechanism, so we started out with some concept sketches.

This was a good first start, but after considering how hard the circular tracks would be to manufacture, we decided to pivot. We looked for inspiration online and found this video, which ultimately shaped our new design with 3 sliding points.

This design seemed much more feasable, and we got to work creating some CAD models.

After this stage we started to consider manufacturing, and for the purposes of the prototype, had to change what we had modeled. We found that the pins we were going to use weren’t going to work. They would make the structure too weak and amidst fear of breaking the prototype at presentation day, we changed the CAD a small amount.

We designed these new pins to insert everything together and got to printing the initial linkage.

While that was going on, we also started work on the kinematic analysis.

Once that was looking good, the prints were about done, so we got started on assembly for the prototype showcase!