Indexing mechanism

[Eric Summers]

Hey everyone! It's not often I get to post in this section, so this is awesome!

This is an indexing mechanism that I modeled several years ago after I had graduated. I saw this animation by Gareth Fowler: http://garethwashere.tumblr.com/post/124060065152/150716 and wanted to try to make it myself. This gif was my only reference, so it was interesting to get all of the geometry figured out. I wanted to 3D print it so once I had the geometry figured out I set to making it so I could print and assemble it.
I recently had some free time and decided I wanted to try animating it. I made some visual changes to clean the look up some since it didn't need to be assembled. The animation was created in SolidWorks (with no shortage of frustration, I might add ). I rendered two versions with some materials that were fun to make. The last image is a photo of the printed version, just for kicks.

Hope you like it! 

[mattjgerard]

That's pretty cool! Nice to be able t hold something you created.

In SW, is the animation based off part interactions (physics and collisions) or did you have to time out each piece? I've tried to make some of these types in C4D with the dynamics system with limited but interesting successes.

[Eric Summers]

That's pretty cool! Nice to be able t hold something you created.

In SW, is the animation based off part interactions (physics and collisions) or did you have to time out each piece? I've tried to make some of these types in C4D with the dynamics system with limited but interesting successes.

Thanks Matt! Initially I tried to use physical dynamics for the animation, but there were some very weird things going on. The problem is that the motion as shown relies on very high friction between the parts so the main body doesn't keep rotating once the "fork" isn't contacting it. Well, large friction values in SW create problems so I couldn't go that route. So yes, I had to time two motors to get it to look right. That pesky physics thing was getting in the way . The main body has it's own motor with a manually tuned position curve. The rest of the mechanism is a second motor that keeps the motion as close to real as possible.

[bdesign]

Super cool, Eric!

Cheers,
Eric

[Eric Summers]

Super cool, Eric!

Cheers,
Eric

Thanks Eric! Glad you like it!