Arduino Time!

We have finally completed the final model of our chair in both detail model (full scale) and full chair model at quarter scale. But first, here's our process model that we used to figure out our gears:



So here's the final product!










So it's the same concept as before, Person sits, the seat and racks move down which turn the gears that makes everything happen. These first 2 pictures are the "before" state; here's the chair in its final position.






So we have tested it and it does work; there's only a couple of quirks to work out concerning friction, etc. But other than that, we're excited! It's hooked up to the Arduino and Servo (which was wired and programmed much with the help of Josh and Andrew) with a button so that we can rotate it up and down. It's pretty nifty.

Lastly, the full chair model:

Gears and Software

After brainstorming ideas for things we could design with our combined mechanisms (rack and pinion and linkages) we started doing research on different types of linkages and came across this very cool video of a Watt's linkage:

We now have a really interesting concept for a chair that we want to design. I think we're actually going to end up cutting the Watt's linkage out of our chair for now (more drawings to follow) but we discovered the Mekanimo software from this video which is really cool. I also just got the Autodesk Inventor software last night, so I'm going to start playing with that and finally, Allen found a nifty plugin for SketchUp called sketchy physics which might come in handy too. So now we have options of how to figure out how everything is going to work with our gears and linkages!