Saturday, February 11, 2012

Hobby Motor Mount


James and I are teaching the Engineering Foundation course again this year and one of the projects we're going to be doing is making a steam powered electrical generator.

The generator will be based on the steam turbine car which the students built earlier in the course.


The steam turbine car kit is from the University of Kwazulu Natal, in standard form they scuttle up and down the corridors of our engineering department while running on meths... Much to the displeasure of the cleaners.

We're going to be using a small DC hobby motor as the generator. Now i wanted something elegant for mounting the motors that would be compatible with the perforated plastic mechanical construction system we have for the class.

20 minutes with Sketchup and I came up with this:
The part was subsequently printed and here are two clamping the motor complete with a 3d printed pulley.


New Conduit Clamp for the Rapman

For about a year now the Rapman has had a clamp holding the plastic conduit. The clamp was inserted into the original 10073 conduit mount plate. The plate is laser cut acrylic and on a recent trip to a secondary school I managed to smash it getting into the car.

I decided to design a part that took place of both the clamp and the mounting plate in one piece... 30 mins in google sketchup later and I had this:


Into the printer and 50 minutes later I installed the new part :)