interactive donation box

INTERACTIVEDONATIONBOX
21918733
Design & Technology
Major Design Project
Table of Contents
Project Proposal ...................................................................................................................................... 3
Identification of the Needs to Develop the Design Project ................................................................ 3
An Explanation of the Proposed Design Project ............................................................................. 3
Motivation, Purpose & Target Market of the Project ..................................................................... 4
Areas of Investigation ......................................................................................................................... 4
Criteria Established To Evaluate Success ........................................................................................ 5
Project Management .............................................................................................................................. 5
Action & Time Plan.............................................................................................................................. 5
Planned ........................................................................................................................................... 5
Actual .............................................................................................................................................. 5
Finance Plan ........................................................................................................................................ 5
Planned ........................................................................................................................................... 5
Actual .............................................................................................................................................. 6
Identification & Justification of Other Resources ............................................................................... 6
Project Development .............................................................................................................................. 6
Research .............................................................................................................................................. 6
Currently Available Products .......................................................................................................... 6
Laser Cutting ................................................................................................................................... 8
Experimentation & Testing Of Materials, Tools and Techniques ....................................................... 8
Coins or Marbles ............................................................................................................................. 8
Prototypes ....................................................................................................................................... 9
Computer Aided Design ................................................................................................................ 17
Project Realization ............................................................................................................................ 18
Marble Run.................................................................................................................................... 18
Gears ............................................................................................................................................. 20
Pivot points ................................................................................................................................... 21
Case ............................................................................................................................................... 21
Evidence of Practical Skills, Creativity and Innovation ................................................................. 23
Safety ............................................................................................................................................ 23
Evaluation ............................................................................................................................................. 23
Record of Evaluation Procedures throughout the Project................................................................ 23
Analysis of Functional & Aesthetic Aspects of the Design ................................................................ 24
Functional: .................................................................................................................................... 24
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Aesthetics:..................................................................................................................................... 24
Evaluation With Respect To the Impact on Society & the Environment .......................................... 24
Individual ....................................................................................................................................... 24
Society ........................................................................................................................................... 24
Environment.................................................................................................................................. 24
Final Evaluation In Relation To the Criteria Set By the Student ....................................................... 25
Areas of Success: ........................................................................................................................... 25
Areas Needing More Attention ..................................................................................................... 25
Final Thoughts ................................................................................................................................... 25
Appendix 1 ............................................................................................................................................ 26
Acknowledgements........................................................................................................................... 26
Bibliography ...................................................................................................................................... 26
Appendix 2 ............................................................................................................................................ 27
Action Plan ........................................................................................................................................ 27
Appendix 3 ............................................................................................................................................ 27
Finance Planning ............................................................................................................................... 27
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Project Proposal|Identification of the Needs to Develop the Design Project
Project Proposal
Identification of the Needs to Develop the Design Project
Many charities rely on income received from donation boxes to help people in need. The need that
my project addresses is that the majority of donation boxes are uninviting and offer no incentive for
donating. I believe if a donation box was to actively respond to a donation and be interesting it
would provide an incentive for people to contribute and much more money could be raised.
The problem with most interactive donation boxes currently available on the market is the majority
of them are either quite small and can easily go unnoticed, or are very large and consume a large
amount of floor space, making them unsuitable for many locations where space is limited (e.g.
narrow corridors).
Figure 1 - A common spiral donation box,
takes up approximately a square meter of
floor space
Because of this I believe that a donation box that provides the incentive to donate as well as having
a very small footprint would be a suitable and worthwhile project, which could be later produced as
a saleable product.
An Explanation of the Proposed Design Project
The design I propose will be a cabinet suitable for mounting on a wall or placing on a table that can
be easily relocated and set up. To provide the interest to donators, inserting a coin will release a
certain number of marbles through a course, depending on the value of the coin inserted. This
means that there will be extra incentive for a user to donate more money. Having marbles roll
around instead of the coins means that the machine can be made more reliable and will be much
easier to build because of not having to account for the different size and weights of the coins.
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Project Proposal|Areas of Investigation
Coin sorting
Window
Marble Run Window
Window
Promoting
Cause
Bar Graph/Thermometer
Shows how much of target has been
raised
Figure 2 - Proposed Design
Motivation, Purpose & Target Market of the Project
This project is not designed to be a mass produced item, it is designed to be a unique and creative
donation box that is hopefully able to raise funds towards a worthy cause while at the same time
being of a quality that means it functions as a decoration that is attractive and interesting as well as
a donation box.
However if there was going to be a mass produced version of my product I think laser cutting or
computer controlled routing would be the most sensible way to create them cost effectively. A
version of the donation box could also be produced to feature the colour scheme or logo of an
organization.
Areas of Investigation
The elements of the project that will need investigation are:
•
•
•
•
•
•
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How to secure the money
How to sort and record money donated
A method of lifting marbles back to the their starting point
A method for splitting a stream of marbles along multiple paths
Interesting track elements for marbles
Where marbles/ball bearings can be bought in large quantities
Sources of recycled materials such as wood and Perspex or Glass
I plan to find most of this information by researching existing marble machines and donation boxes
in local shops as well as ones for sale or display on the internet. For determining the best way to
count and store money I plan to find out more about how vending machines work and how they
tackle these issues.
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Project Management|Action & Time Plan
Criteria Established To Evaluate Success
I will classify the project a success if I manage to create a donation box that has interesting elements
that make people want to put more money into it than non-interactive donation boxes, as well as
having a smaller footprint making it more suitable for cramped spaces than standard interactive
donation boxes.
In addition the project should be aesthetically pleasing, work reliably and be reasonably secure. If I
have time I would like to further assess the success of this project by finding a location such as the
front office at our school or the Science Center where its performance and appearance can be
assessed in a real world situation.
Project Management
Action & Time Plan
Planned
For the remainder of term four I plan to spend the rest of my time designing prototypes for different
components of the machine. These will include parts such as the lift, the coin sorter and a device to
split a stream of marbles into around four streams.
I hope to have completed the case, coin sorting and counting mechanisms, electronics and marble
lift completed by the end of term 1 2011. This should leave plenty of time for trouble shooting as
well as for the completion of my folio and project display. I have also drawn up a rough plan of the
hierarchy of tasks that need to be carried out to complete my project.
For a more detailed action plan see Appendix 2
Actual
My original time plan was probably a little bit naive in the amount of time I allowed for constructing
my project. The time that I spent working on only prototypes turned out to be quite accurate but
creating full plans for my entire project took many more weeks than expected.
During the construction of my actual project I have had to change and revise my design due to
problems with my project that only became apparent during construction as well as due to the
availability of materials.
Many parts of my project that I had originally anticipated to be very straight forward turned out to
be long and complex issues such as how to mount a gear to the shaft of the motor and creating pivot
points that were able to turn freely enough.
Finance Plan
Planned
For the project I would like to attempt to recycle as many components as possible not only will this
reduce the cost of the project but it will re-use items that would usually have just been disposed of.
In all I plan for the project to cost me well under $200 with the main costs being the cost of any
electronics and motors as well as any consumables such as Lacquer or Glue.
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Project Development|Identification & Justification of Other Resources
Actual
The final cost of my project ended up being slightly more expensive than I had originally budgeted
for. The main reason for this is being unable to find suitable wood that I could recycle to make the
frame for my project. This wood set me $120 forwards in my budget, if I had been able to find a
good source of wood I would have been well under budget as I was able to find large sheets of glass
to recycle in my project as well as finding a source for the electronics that made them much cheaper
than I had originally expected them to cost from local shops. I was also lucky that a local
manufacturer donated a sufficient number of ball bearings for my project.
For a detailed breakdown of the costs and resources used in the creation of this project see
Appendix 3
Identification & Justification of Other Resources
During the development and construction of my project I was able to identify a few resources that I
was able to use in my project, the largest of these were two large sheets of glass that the Art
department at school was disposing of, to be able to incorporate some of this glass into my design I
had to tweak the overall measurements of my project to fit the glass.
Other resources that I plan to make use of are my own collection of many random components from
the many electronic devices I have disassembled over the past few years, wood that can be found in
the scrap bins at school and plywood sourced from draws in our old science labs (demolished). These
are good materials to use not only because they are free but because it is making use of things that
would otherwise be thrown away.
For the construction of the project I plan to make use of the woodwork and metalwork rooms at
school as well as our own workshop at home. For details on the construction of the project I will also
refer to Mr Wetton my Design and Technology teacher as well as my father.
Project Development
Research
Currently Available Products
The most common form of interactive donation box that I have seen in shops or on the internet are
giant spiral donation boxes. These seem to be reasonably successful at attracting attention and
donations but I don’t think they are very aesthetically pleasing; in addition they have a relatively
large footprint which may interfere with traffic flow.
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Project Development|Research
Figure 3 - The donation box at Woolworths, it is about 1.1m in diameter and
can cause a choke point when the shopping center is busy or there are
parents with prams.
The other main variety of interactive donation box that I found where the desktop variety and
usually feature a single track element such as the ones at McDonalds where putting in a coin spins
Ronald. I also found a very elegant desktop donation box by the “Change for a billion” foundation
that sorts coins into their respective denominations. If I can I would like to incorporate a similar
wooden, clean style into my own project.
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Project Development|Experimentation & Testing Of Materials, Tools and Techniques
Figure 4 - An example of a simple but
elegant desktop interactive donation
box.
Laser Cutting
One of the biggest decisions in producing this project was whether it would be worth it to get all of
the intricate components laser cut, this would save me a lot of time as well as producing a much
more accurate product.
Looking at possible places to get my project lasercut I found many companies were much too
expensive, some even charging exorbitant fees just to load your files. The best option I found was a
web based laser cutting service called Ponoko, who charges no fees to submit word design, can give
automatic quoting and has a very wide range of materials at reasonable prices as well as reasonable
rates on the cutting itself. I was going to get a small money box (more info on Page 18) laser cut out
of cardboard to test the service but found that the shipping costs make this solution more expensive
than I would like the project to be.
If I was going to make multiple donation boxs I would need to look into this further.
Experimentation & Testing Of Materials, Tools and Techniques
There were many elements of my design that required preliminary testing before I could design and
construct my final product; these were mainly the moving track elements of my project as well as a
method for identifying coins.
Coins or Marbles
After deciding on what kind of project I wanted to make the largest design choice I had to make was
whether I wanted to have the coins themselves rolling around or to have the coins trigger some
other mechanism. In addition if I were going to go the marble route I would probably use ball
bearing as they are heavier than the marbles as well as being much more consistent in their size.
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Project Development|Experimentation & Testing Of Materials, Tools and Techniques
Prototypes
Although I could get a general idea of mechanisms to construct through watching YouTube videos of
marble runs and Rube Goldberg Machines1 I couldn’t find any plans or advice on how to go about
constructing different track elements myself. Because of this I have had a few rounds of
development. I created rough prototypes out of wood or cardboard of a few different mechanisms
to get a rough feel for how marbles or ball bearings will behave and to find out more specifically
what kinds of mechanism I might be able to create. To reduce costs and environmental impact all
parts of these prototypes were scavenged from the scrap bin in our D&T rooms as well as from old
cardboard computer boxes that were being thrown out at the time.
Lifting mechanism
The most complicated and elaborate mechanism that I had to design for my project was some form
of lifting mechanism to raise marbles to the top of the run when money was inserted, I was originally
going to construct a “marble pump” (see Figure 5) that uses a cam to push marbles into a bottom of
a stack, where the top marble will roll off into the machine, one of the main problems with this
design is that it requires a lot of marbles, due to the relatively high price of bearing balls I consider
this option to be too expensive to make use of in my project.
Figure 5 - Marble pump, diagram borrowed from woodgears.ca
The second design I looked at was in a beautifully crafted marble machine by Ronald Walter. This
system used multiple wheels with angled holes to raise the balls. This is a system that looks good
and could be easily modified to require fewer balls to be in the lift at one time (see Figure 6).
1
A machine that is deliberately over-engineered and performs a very simple task in a very complex fashion.
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Project Development|Experimentation & Testing Of Materials, Tools and Techniques
Figure 6 - Marble machine by Ronald Walter
This is the system that I decided to adapt for my design. In my version of this design I have only 6
cutouts per wheel to reduce the number of balls that will be in the lift at any one time. I also used
multiple smaller wheels instead of two big wheels to reduce the width of the lift to save space. I
have also made use of a system of guides instead of angled holes to make the overall mechanism
thinner and require less wooden gears to be constructed (see Figure 7).
Figure 7 - First cardboard prototype and final wooden prototype including gears and a motor on
the back.
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Project Development|Experimentation & Testing Of Materials, Tools and Techniques
Track elements
As a way of quickly prototyping some of the track elements I planned to use in my design I created a
few demo tracks out of cut up cardboard boxes nailed to a board. This worked reasonably well and
allowed me to test some of the more advanced aspects of my design (see Figure 8).
Figure 8 - Cardboard Prototype
Electronics
While I have had some experience with soldering and constructing circuits in the past I have a very
basic knowledge of how to go about designing circuits, because of this I had to a lot of research on
the different ways that I could do the tasks required in my project such as being able to control a
motor and how I was going to identify coins entered into the machine.
To simplify the circuitry needed in the control of my interactive donation box I decided from the
beginning to use a cheap easily accessible microcontroller such as an Arduino or a Teensy (see Figure
9) both of which are relatively low cost, I have some experience with programming, as well as
already owning a few so I can start testing immediately.
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Project Development|Experimentation & Testing Of Materials, Tools and Techniques
Figure 9 - Left Arduino, right teensy
Motor Control
The first aspect of the electronics that I investigated was how I could turn on and off a motor. The
two most common methods for this were via a special transistor or via a relay. In the research of
these technologies I was surprised at how many almost identical models of the same chip/relay
there were available. Due to the low cost of these components I bought one of each to experiment
with, the components I chose were a TIP 120 Darlington transistor and a 5v SPDT2 Relay (5v referring
to coil voltage).
Out of these I was only able to get the transistor to work, so I will use this method in my project. This
choice also allows me to control the speed of the motor if necessary, however if I do this I will need
to attach some kind of heat sink to the transistor, as to control the speed the transistor is just turned
on and off very rapidly resulting in extra heat to be dissipated.
Figure 10 - Prototyping the circuit on a breadboard, I have used a
light in place of the motor for a more visual indicator of when it is
turned on. The black box in the top right of the picture is the relay
that I was not able to get working.
2
Single Pole Double Throw
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Project Development|Experimentation & Testing Of Materials, Tools and Techniques
Coin Sorter
The most challenging part of project design was to try and decide upon a way that I could
electronically determine what kind of coin had been put into the machine. I did a lot of research into
the technology that vending machines used to detect currency, as well as research into novelty
money boxes that keep a running tally of your money. Unfortunately the mechanisms used in these
devices are either too complicated such as using induction or containing a myriad of finely balanced
levers to identify coins making them unsuitable for the timeframe of this project, in addition these
methods do not lend themselves to being an interesting part of the visual display.
As part of my own testing I looked at two different designs, the first made use of a mechanical arm
and a potentiometer3 to determine the size of the coin. I ruled out this design because I was unable
to find any potentiometers that were sturdy enough and yet still easy enough to turn that the coins
would not require the use of excessive force to be inserted.
Figure 11 - Coin sorter concept sketch
I also looked at using the concept from a money box that I had designed in a junior D&T course, that
mechanically sorts the stream of coins, I would then only need to be able to detect electronically
when a coin falls though each section. I decided to use this method as besides being the simplest to
implement it also lends itself well to being displayed and means that the coins in the machine can be
stored separately in their denominations. Because I have been able asses how well the money box I
designed works I have been able to make some design improvements to improve reliability such as
having longer rectangular holes making it much harder for a coin to skip its own hole.
3
One of the most common forms of variable resistor available
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Project Development|Experimentation & Testing Of Materials, Tools and Techniques
Figure 12 - Year 9 Coin soring money box
After a coin has fallen through its respective holes I needed a way to know if a coin has gone past.
Originally I was going to use some kind of microswitch, but decided that this could prove to be very
unreliable with light weight coins, instead I decided to go with a light based system that should pick
up coins as they fell past. I constructed a prototype out of scrap/left over electronics at home and
connected it to my Arduino. The system I used was a simple beam break system comprised of a LDR4
and a LED5.
Figure 13 - Circuit diagram used to detect coins
My first version of code to detect the coin was based off reading in an analog value but I found it
difficult to determine a correct threshold value to get accurate results, as a last ditch effort I tried
reading a digital value just to see what happened with the DetectingStateChanges example that
comes with the Arduino development environment and it works well so I will incorporate this
method into my project.
I have tested multiple iterations of a design to sort and count coins to come up with my final
product. This includes reference to a money box that I made in Year 9 (see Figure 12 ) as well as a
few prototypes of improved designs before arriving at my final system.
4
5
Light Dependant Resistor
Light Emitting Diode
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Project Development|Experimentation & Testing Of Materials, Tools and Techniques
Figure 14 - Prototype coin counter left, prototype coin sorter right
The most difficult part of creating the coin sorter was finding the correct angle and pitch to hold it
at, having it tilted too far forwards and the coins can skip their holes or fall off the front, too far back
and they won’t slide. If the path is angled too far down coins will travel too slowly or stop, likewise if
it is too steep coins are likely to speed up and skip their hole.
Figure 15 - Final Coin Sorter/counter
Bar Graph
Since I already planned on being able to detect what kind of coin is inserted into the machine to
control the marble run I thought it would be an interesting idea to provide an additional form of
visual feedback as to how donations were progressing. I wanted to do this in the form of an LED bar
graph. I looked at a few commercial bar graph modules but was unable to find any that I would be
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Project Development|Experimentation & Testing Of Materials, Tools and Techniques
able to interface with at a reasonable cost, the cheapest solution I found being over $80 for a 40
segment bar graph.
Instead of buying a commercial bar graph module I did some research on how I would be able to
control a large amount of LEDs directly from my Arduino, there tuned out to be a lot of information
and guides to get started doing this in the Arduino community and I decided that the most suitable
method would be to control them via shift registers, the specific variety I chose was a SIPO6
M74HC595C1 because of its availability as well as being a shift register that has the additional
functionality of being able to be chained together so that it doesn’t use any more pins on my
Arduino.
Like with the circuit I did for motor control I prototyped this on a breadboard with a single shift
register before designing the full circuit. I used a freeware program called VeroDes to design the
layout of the circuit on stripboard/veroboard. It would have saved me a lot of work to etch a custom
PCB but I decided against this as I had learnt in one of the junior electronics courses that it is very
difficult to drill the holes for components with many connections accurate enough, and if the holes
weren’t aligned properly I could end up with a crooked looking bar graph.
Figure 16 - The soldered board, showing both the bar graph and the motor control circuit
Unfortunately the veroboard available at school was not enough tracks wide for my 40 segment bar
graph, because of this I had to make a frame to hold two pieces of veroboard next to each other to
get the extra width. By using two widths of veroboard I also had a small amount of free space that I
used to hold the motor control circuit. Soldering all of the components onto the veroboard took
much longer than I anticipated with taking about 10 hours of soldering time split over 3 days, after
which I really hope I don’t need to see another soldering iron for the rest of my project.
One part of working on the electronics of the project that was particularly satisfying was that it
allowed some of the theoretical knowledge that you learn in physics to be applied to a practical
problem.
6
Serial In Parallel Out
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Project Development|Experimentation & Testing Of Materials, Tools and Techniques
Unfortunately when I changed the design of the case there was no suitable place to locate this
component this has meant that it has been removed from the project. I will however incorporate it
into one of my future projects.
Computer Aided Design
The next step I took towards designing my final product was the production of a full computer model
of my project. This allows me to figure out how all of the parts will fit together and even allows me
to do computer simulations to test some of the components as if I had already created them, I would
have liked to do a simulation of the whole mechanism at once but was unable to do so because of
the computing time that would be required and I believe that this time would be better spent
working on constructing the actual project.
Figure 17 - A computer rendered image of the marble run
component
The program that I used to do this is Autodesk Inventor. I was first introduced to this program during
work experience at BlueScope Steel. I decided to use this program for a few reasons the first being
that it is available for free for students to use as well as being widely acclaimed and used in the
engineering industry, in addition I think it would be a useful skill to develop.
As a practice project and part of looking into laser cutting I designed a cardboard version of the
money box that I constructed in Year 9, I designed the money box to slot together requiring no glue
at all (see Figure 18). As part of this I tested preparing cutting plans from my Inventor models that
could be submitted to Ponoko a web based laser cutting service. I however decided against getting
my project lasercut because of the prohibitive cost of shipping more info can be found on page 8.
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Project Development|Project Realization
Figure 18 - Computer Render of a cardboard slot together coin sorting
money box
Project Realization
After I had thought about and designed all of the various aspects of my project it was time to begin
construction. Throughout the construction of the project there were a few different aspects that
needed to be redesigned. The biggest example of this is the case, I had originally planned to have
three separate windows but this turned out to be much too large a cabinet that would have been
impractical to mount anywhere, because of this the cabinet was redesigned to have a single window.
Marble Run
For the marble run I had originally planned to make use of plywood offcuts formed into layers to
create the paths of my marble run and this is what I anticipated when I created my computer model.
However I was unable to find enough offcuts of a similar size or color to build my project so I ended
up buying a full sheet of 6mm 5ply plywood to make the marble tracks out of.
To make sure I could be sure of how accurate the pieces of my project were, I printed exact 1:1
templates from my computer and glued these to MDF. I chose to make my templates out of MDF
because of how easy it is to shape as well as having offcuts from previous projects at home that
could be used.
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Project Development|Project Realization
Figure 19 - A few rough cut templates awaiting sanding to the line.
During the construction of these templates I realized that making each track piece out of 3 layers of
plywood was going to make it very difficult to have all three layers line up perfectly, because of this I
have decided to make all of my pieces from a thicker plywood and then route out a trench profile for
the marbles to roll along. Instead of buying a new sheet of plywood I glued layers of the plywood on
top of each other.
Figure 20 - Laying out all of my templates so I could figure out how much wood I
needed to glue together, all of the template pieces are orientated so that the
grain will be in the same direction.
After all the sheets had been cut out and glued together to form the thicker plywood, I traced the
outlines of all of the pieces onto it and rough cut the pieces using the bandsaw, to minimize tearout I
also made my own insert for our bandsaw table that is much closer to the blade. The MDF templates
were then attached to the plywood using double sided tape and then trimmed very close to the
templates on the bandsaw to reduce the amount of material that would have to be removed using
the router. On some of the smaller pieces and my relative inexperience with the router I enlisted the
assistance of my dad on routing some of the smaller pieces both in routing them to match the
groove as well as to cut the profile into the pieces.
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Project Development|Project Realization
The profile cut into each piece consisted of 2 passes with a 45° router bit as well as an extra pass to
try and clean up a messy tongue left down the middle of each piece that was too thick to just clean
out with a knife. I am not very happy with how the router bit has left some sections of the wood,
particularly corners a little singed looking and I have been unable to remove this look with a light
sanding in addition this process left a very rough edge in the center of the groove where the tips of
the 45° bit had cut, however this was easily fixed, a bit of experimenting and I found that the best
way to remove these was via a wire brush attached to a dremel.
Figure 21 - Example of the messy edge that i cleaned up with
the dremel
Gears
The gears were created in a similar way to the track pieces, a template was generated using the gear
template generator at woodgears.ca, to make a paper then MDF template. The gears were cut out of
a single layer of 6mm plywood and routed. Instead of using double sided tape to hold the template
to the gears they were bolted together to make sure that their centers were perfectly aligned. Due
to the small radius corner between each tooth a smaller diameter router bit had to be purchased,
this was used in our trimmer which was clamped upside down in our bench vice.
Figure 22 - Routing out the gears
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Project Development|Project Realization
Pivot points
There are many elements in the project that need to be able to pivot and with varying attributes.
One constraint is that all of the flip-flops must have some friction so that they can retain marbles
correctly, and the pivot for gears and the central “Dripper” must be able to rotate very freely.
To achieve these different properties I ended up using some stainless steel bar out of disassembled
printers as well as various other components from my boxes of scraps. For the gears I have used
simple piece of scrap stainless steel pipe to act as a low tech bearing, and for the central dripper I
used ball bearings harvested from old hard drives.
For all of the flip flops, I found that they worked well enough with the metal shaft making contact
directly with the backboard and with a spring on the back to keep the piece flush against the
backboard.
Case
Because I was unable to find any waste timber such as old floorboards or rafters to repurpose into
the case to hold my project I had to choose wood to buy. Since I wanted a dark timber I decided on
using blackwood. Since I have access to the necessary equipment to machine down a rough board, I
went with this option to help keep costs down.
The construction of the case involved machining the boards to the required size from rough stock
using a jointer, thicknesser, bandsaw and dropsaw.
The boards were trimmed to a few millimeters longer than their final lengths. A slot was routed in
along one side of the boards as well as routing dovetail joints one each of the end of the boards to
hold the box together. This was done using a dovetail jig resulting in accurate joins. I was a bit
disappointed though by some of the tearout that occurred on the edges of the pins.
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Project Development|Project Realization
Figure 23 - Routing the dovetails
After the case was glued together the protruding ends of the pins were planed flush with the end of
the board (see Figure 24). This was difficult because when cutting some of the ends the plane was
cutting against the grain meaning that there was a large amount of tearout on some sides. This was
able to be mostly hidden by some aggressive sanding.
Figure 24 - Planning the ends flush
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Evaluation|Record of Evaluation Procedures throughout the Project
To finish the case all sides were sanded up to 320 grit using a random orbital sander, wiped down
and oiled with Danish oil.
The door of the case was constructed in a similar fashion, except mortise and tennon joints were
used, these were cut using a homemade jig on the table saw. A rebate was routed in the back of the
door and the glass was attached using silicone.
Evidence of Practical Skills, Creativity and Innovation
I believe that the way that I have faced the problems and challenges in designing and constructing
my project demonstrate my creativity and high quality practical skills and that this is further
reflected in the end product.
I believe that my product is innovative as there are no products on the market that I could find that
function in a similar way or provide all of the benefits that my product does.
Safety
There were various safety precautions that were taken during the construction of this project the
most common being eye and hearing protection. Safety glasses were worn for almost all work done
on the project except the main exception being when using hand tools. Hearing protection was worn
while using particularly noisy machines such as the router, jointer and thicknesser.
Other things that were looked after were making sure that adequate dust extraction or dust masks
were worn particularly while working with MDF and all soldering was carried out in a well-ventilated
area.
One other important aspect of safety that I found out about was that any glass that is below the
height of a char rail (approx. 500 mm off the ground) must be safety glass. This means that my
project must be mounted a minimum of 500mm off the ground to comply with these regulations.
Evaluation
Record of Evaluation Procedures throughout the Project
Throughout my project there have be many areas where the design has had to be reevaluated. One
of the main examples of this is where I swapped from using stacked layers to form the pieces and
instead used a router to create the profile for the marbles to roll along. This meant that there were
many less pieces to cut out as well as the pieces being much better fitted together.
The decision to make use of recycled glass actually determined my cabinet size meaning that the
design of my track needed to be modified slightly to suit its dimensions.
There were also many other forms of evaluation such as the decision to place the coin sorter behind
the backboard and to leave out the LED bar graph to create a cleaner looking display.
In addition I looked into laser cutting as a method of manufacturing my product, but found that the
cost of shipping makes this option prohibitively expensive.
Page | 23
Evaluation|Analysis of Functional & Aesthetic Aspects of the Design
I have found it difficult to judge the time required to complete many of the components. This has
meant I didn’t have enough time to secure the front of the case with a locking mechanism as
planned.
Analysis of Functional & Aesthetic Aspects of the Design
Functional:
I am mostly happy with the functionality aspects of the project, the marble run works very reliably,
however the coin sorter still requires a very small amount of fine-tuning as occasionally a 20c coin
may skip its hole (registering as 50c).
I also believe that it provides a strong incentive to donate as many people have been very intrigued
by the marble run.
Aesthetics:
I am very happy with the overall look of the project except for a few minor defects that I do not have
enough time to correct. The look of the light coloured wood against the matt black background has
turned out much better than I originally expected it to and provides a nice contrast.
Evaluation With Respect To the Impact on Society & the Environment
Individual
Society
This product should have a positive impact on society if it is able to attract donations to support
charities that do important work to help those in need. For the time being I would like to have my
donation box set up and to collect donations towards World Vision as it is an organization supported
by our school as well as it being a worthy cause in my opinion as well.
Environment
This product should have a minimal effect on the environment, this is due to it being built out of
almost entirely renewable resources as well as making use of many recycled materials that would
have usually been thrown away.
If the project is broken beyond repair or reaches the end of its lifecycle the majority of its parts are
wood and should not have any significant effect on the environment.
Page | 24
Evaluation|Final Evaluation In Relation To the Criteria Set By the Student
Final Evaluation In Relation To the Criteria Set By the Student
Areas of Success:
My project takes up much less floor space than the majority of interactive donation boxes. I find it
aesthetically pleasing and think that it could be used to decorate a wall. It also seems to fascinate
people this indicates that it would do well attracting donations. Unfortunately I did not complete my
project with enough time to set it up in a public place where its effectiveness at attracting donations
could be more qualitatively measured.
While the box has no specific security system it is reasonably heavy and needs to be removed from
the wall to get to the money inside it. This makes the money at least as secure as it would be in the
common donation boxes found on shop counters.
Areas Needing More Attention
I think that the form factor of the project could be improved possibly by using a slightly smaller size
of ball bearing or by using coins as the moving elements instead of marbles. By further reducing the
form factor of the donation box it would be suitable to have one in more places.
My project could have also benefited from a more detailed time plan as some aspects of the project
ended up having to be rushed to be completed in time, and some such as a lock on the front of the
cabinet had to be left out completely.
Final Thoughts
I am reasonably happy with how my project turned out and the skills that I learnt in its creation. If I
was to work on a similar project in the future I think I would design a much smaller desktop donation
box that can be lasercut out of layers of acrylic.
I hope that I am able to find somewhere that my donation box is able to be set up to raise money for
organizations such as World Vision who rely almost entirely on donations to continue operation.
Page | 25
Appendix 1|Acknowledgements
Appendix 1
Acknowledgements
Many people were crucial to the creation of this project they were Mr Wetton for the help with
designing different aspects of my project. My dad Greg Powell for the use of his garage, for teaching
me how to use tools that I hadn’t used before such as the table saw and for providing an extra pair
of hands when more than one was needed.
Also thanks mum for spending the time to proof read this folio as well as for begrudgingly tolerating
the lounge room to be filled with dust and pieces of wood for the duration of this project and finally
thank you to my sister Kate for creating the World Vision poster to accompany my project while she
was stuck at home with the chickenpox.
Bibliography
http://www.arduino.cc/en/Tutorial/ShiftOut
http://woodgears.ca/
http://hsc.csu.edu.au/design_technology/
http://www.donationbox.co.uk/
http://itp.nyu.edu/physcomp/Tutorials/HighCurrentLoads
http://bildr.org/2011/03/high-power-control-with-arduino-and-tip120/
http://www.ponoko.com/
http://www.futurlec.com/
Page | 26
Appendix 2|Action Plan
Appendix 2
Action Plan
Appendix 3
Finance Planning
Page | 27
Research Electronics
Write Software
Project Complete
Prototype Electronics
Apply Finish
Solder Electronics
Components Installed
Electronics Installed
Source Wood
Track Installed
Source electronics components
Prototype Coin sorter
Installed Coin Sorter
Apply Finish
Build track elements
Cut coin sorter
Research existing marble run designs
Appendix 2
Prototype Track Elements
Source Wood
Shows the hierarchy of tasks to be compleated,
with each tasks prerequisits
Make Case
Cut Glass
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