about

This was a short and fun project done for Bootcamp - a 3 week training program that happens at the start of the Engineering Design Innovation course, and that culminates in a science-fair style exhibition of the projects everyone creates!

the project

My Car-ousel was created as a metaphor for my entering “adult life” for the first time. Adult life wasn’t all freedom and craziness like I had imagined, it instead seemed like an endless loop of cooking, cleaning, doing laundry, filling out forms… it never seemed to end!

But. Life is what you make it, isn’t it? Even the continuous cycle of adult responsibilities can be fun, as long as we never lose sight of our inner child.

So, I created Car-ousel (of course it had to be cars, we’re adults now!) Going round and round in circles was never this much fun!

The process

I started out on my first ever project at EDI by sketching out what I wanted my carousel to look like.

Once I had an idea of what I wanted it to look like, I focused my efforts on identifying the ideal gear system to run the carousel. I knew I wanted to make it run through a hand crank, and with that in mind I started to 3D print different kinds of gears to see which would work best. After messing around with rack and pinion gears, I decided that the best option be using a bevel gear system.

Then, with my bevel gears 3D printed, I moved on to building the core mechanism of the carousel. For this, I used wooden dowels of various diameters.

Finally, I moved on to building the external structure. I did this by laser cutting matboard and spray painting the pieces orange. I then went crazy with a red marker to create a carousel that was uniquely me!