One of my responsibilities as a makerspace employee at the colorado school of mines was to lead a workshop. I chose to take a page out of the playbook, and copy what I had done at my last makerspace job, and lead one on rope making. At my last makerspace, I had built the machine from lego technic pieces and EV3 bricks, but this time, I wanted to step it up a notch. I had already acquired a washing machine motor my first semester at college, through a stroke of luck, so my power source was there. I simply needed to make the gearbox to make it spin.

So, as one does, I turned to CAD. I designed around the 8mm OD 22mm ID skate bearings I had on hand, and got a scrap stainless steel axle from the metal shop. Everything else would be 3D printed.

Here's a couple drawings of the final design I came up with.

You may notice this off the bat, but the shafts are held in place by press-on retention rings, not actual clip-on ones. This would end up biting me in the butt pretty bad, as the axles would on many occasions come flying out of the machine when too much tension was put on them. Unfortunately, I didnt' realize this until I was nearly done with the build.

I delegated the task of making the D shafts for the design to my roommate, Diego. He got them done with time to test before the workshop, so I’m grateful for that.

I’m also very grateful to the labriola makerspace for allowing me to use their printers to make all the iterations of parts for this project. Dialing in the spacing of the gears took a lot of time and reprints.

I completed the testing over fall break, and though it definitely spun, I came to the conclusion that I needed more space.

Eventually, the day of the workshop came. I had my coworker Fabian to help me, and I honestly couldn’t have managed the group without him. Also, when the axles popped out, he ran downstairs to the tool checkout area to get what I needed to fix the machine.

Overall, the workshop and project were highly successful, and I look forward to doing it again, though with real retention clips on the axles, or maybe shaft collars if I’m feeling really fancy.