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Objects Holding Secrets

Project Description:

As discussed in class, furniture has been historically designed to hold secrets. From concealing valuables to securing the privacy of correspondence or hiding one’s body from view, furniture has been culturally and conceptually associated with interior domestic space and privacy.  Furniture makers have also historically guarded their techniques making languages of traditional joinery secrets that are physically housed withing the structure of a building or a piece of furniture.

Marquetry is a form of surface decoration where pieces of thin wood are adhered to a substrate to create images and decorative patterns. This technique also conceals the interior materials and structure of the object rendering it a facade; a surface which often employs representation or narrative as a decoy. Traditional pattern carving often serves a similar purpose and can function symbolically or representationally.

For your final Assignment, you’ll be designing a box that will hold a secret. This object must meet the following parameters;

The box will be constructed primarily of solid hard wood and implement mechanical joinery in the design (Splined/Keyed Miters, Datos, Grooves & Rabbets)

The box should be designed to hold a specific thing with the interior size and walls/dividers made to hold the object.

The box must feature marquetry and optionally, carved surface patterns, somewhere on it that relate to the object the box holds.

The box will be no bigger than 12”X12”x12”

This box was made to present a magic trick, similar to sawing a woman in half. There are magnets located in the face of the drawers and hold the entirety of the draw together. The desired look was to create a seamless design.

Challenges Faced:

Barrel hinge placement; as shown in the photos it took many tries to place the hinges directly across one another. This was finally achieved by using a drill press rather than a hand drill

Magnets not strong enough to hold drawer together; I had to buy stronger magnets to account for the length of the drawer itself. Once replaced, the drawer could successfully be held with one hand

The box cracked in the beginning and I had to start over because one of the length of one of the walls was slightly too long

Machines/Tools used:

Table saw

Drill Press

Hand Drill

Miter Saw

Planar

Joiner

Orbital Sander

Screwdrivers

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Mechanical Recovery System, Version 1

This is Part 2 of the Mechanical Recovery System Project.

The main scope of the project has not changed but there have been additions to its design along with a backup recovery system.

To recap, a high-power rocket is set to deploy parachutes using a electromechanical system as opposed to the traditional pyrotechnic charges. This is to improve safety and minimize stored energy. Our initial launch had a successful launch and deployment of our main parachute.

This Version 1 has been modified to fit a bigger (6 inch diameter) airframe along with a radio system that is meant to manually trigger deployment from a ground station over one mile away.

Here are the main improvements of the rocket:

Releasable nose cone assembly for drogue parachute deployment with a latch and flyaway hinge

Fiberglass Reinforcement; securing it to rocket body

3D-Printed Latch Attachment and Latch Release

3-Ring quick release mechanism for main parachute deployment

Polypropylene Belt Strapping

Hand Sewn

Electronics bay with altimeters and servo motors for triggering deployment

Plywood Bulkheads

Aluminium Sled

Threaded Rods

Radio communication system to trigger deployment from ground station

ground test for radio system: 1.41 miles

As for the rest of the project, here are some other things used to complete the rocket:

OpenRocket Simulation Results

Lines Diagram

My main area of focus was the 3-ring release, rocket simulations, and parachutes/lines diagram. It is important to note that the 3-ring release is hand sewn as our group did not have access to a sewing machine. There are also no load rating for the belt strap itself because it was bought from a craft store. The thread also does not have a load rating for the same reasons. Nonetheless, it survived the flight. As for the relation to the parachute lines; it was imperative to go in a specific order to ensure the 3-ring would activate.

The OpenRocket simulations were straightforward with the exception of trying to find a motor that would give the desired altitude and thrust. Thrust is important to note for the stability of the rocket nose cone; the nose cone also serves as a deployment mechanism to pull out the drogue parachute when the latch is released. Altitude range (2,000ft-6,000ft) on the other hand was given from the industry advisor assisting our team.

Testing:

On-Site testing for the servo motors, nose cone latch release, and 3-ring assembly

Flight:

Results & Conclusions:

Unfortunately, our parachutes did not deploy along with the secondary radio system not following through. Although our ground tests showed both the Eggtimer flight computer and the manual radio system could deploy the nose cone latch release and 3-ring system, our system failed due to the loss of power of both 9V batteries.

Version 2 will have the following improvements:

Shorter nosecone - torque reduction for ejection

Refined hinge geometry

Part count Reduction

Composite reinforced nose cone

Metallic flyaway hinge

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Project Description: For this project, you’ll be designing/making a set of 2 artifacts. These artifacts should be in some form of conversation or relationship that is clear through your design decisions. This may be that the two are related through a symbiotic function, it may be that they demonstrate an iterative formal evolution, they may work together to create some sort of meaning through the relationship of their seemingly unrelated functions or share an aesthetic vocabulary of motif, proportion, etc. that formally draws them into conversation. The first will be carved from a piece of wood using only a template to determine the rough shape. The piece of wood itself should inspire the artifact’s shape. For the second design, you’ll work on the Design process to a greater degree by creating exact full-scale drawings in standard orthographic views. For this second design, you’ll need to introduce some component of the form that uses faceted geometry, similar to Platonic Solids. Using the same carving techniques in addition to a wide array of power tools, you’ll work to realize an artifact that is exactly the shape you have drawn on paper. The end result will be the design of a carved wooden artifact that uses the organic shapes and contours found in arboreal physiology paired with the planar forms of geometric solids in juxtaposition. To begin the Geometry of the Organism project, you will find pieces of material in our milling yard at CSULB or glean fallen tree branches from your yard or local parks that you want to experiment with. Next, you’ll begin to make sketches that visualize a form within the masses of these parts and use various tools and machines to carve away material and reveal a form. For the second artifact, use the techniques of orthographic projection described in class to make multiple principle views of the object (top, front, side). You’ll use these views to be able to map the proportions of the object onto the piece of wood you’re working with from different sides. Next we’ll use machines to rough out a billet/blank, various tools to hollow out the bowl and all the machines and hand tools at your disposal to rough out and then finish your artifact.

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Senior Design Project: Rocket Recovery System, Version 0

*This is simply a quick summary of what was done on my part for the portion of this project*

This post documents and details the work accomplished over the course of the Spring semester of 2024 for the course MAE 471 - Design and Analysis of Mechanical Engineering Systems I. The broad goal of this project is to develop a mechanical system to deploy parachutes for a high-power amateur rocket. The current deployment methods utilize black powder pyrotechnic charges to separate segments of the rocket body and deploy parachutes. This method is effective but can be dangerous to both the rocketeer and the rocket itself. The current team consists of four mechanical engineering undergraduate students at California State University, Long Beach. This project was inherited from a previous group of students who did initial research and development during 2023. The previous student group also designed and fabricated a proof-of-concept prototype, which was the basis for much of the work accomplished during this semester. Because a prototype was already present, much of the work of this semester was focused on adapting this prototype for flight testing. For this reason, the activities performed during this semester were primarily focused on testing and fabrication, unlike most of the other senior design teams. Some activities performed by other groups were not prioritized for this project including FEA simulation and design of components from scratch. Instead, aerodynamic simulation and system integration were prioritized. 

The mechanical design inherited by our group consisted of latches used to retain the rocket nose cone and body tubes along with springs to deploy them upon release of the latch. As stated by the previous group, the system was selected in order to easily alter the spring constants which were dependent on overcoming forces. The release of the latches was relying on a cable and pully system.

Fabrication & Fabrication Improvements:

Motor mount assembly, fabrication, and modification

Fabricating Motor mount adapters out of wood due to the motor being too small

Centering ring glue up

Airframe glue up

Surface gluing motor mount tubes

Applying liquid epoxy to fins and then clay epoxy

Sanding down surface of fins for consistency

Airframe Adaption

Model would wobble at connection points, adjustment was to use plumbing O-rings and rubber bands to better secure airframe

Testing:

The latch joints were found to have a difficult time deploying when the airframe of the rocket was more secure. The servo computer deploying latch release system could not overcome the over-center geometry of the latch system. This was adjusted by using rubber bands in some connection points and O-rings in others.

Flight:

For version 0 of the rocket launch the drogue parachute did not deploy at apogee thus making the rocket unable to slow down before the main parachute deployment. This, we presume, was caused by structural failure of the electronics bay. Other deformations and ruptures have not been identified but will be looked into.

Flight Test of Version 0 are pictured below: