I wrote 2 university courses about the design of Mechanisms and Structures which I enjoyed teaching for many years to Design and Engineering students. They included a fun practical project where the students learned to create working Mechanisms through rapid sketch modelling and prototyping.
For several years the project was to create an Automata. My students created many wonderful automata The video above shows the original Water Drop Automata created by Dean O’Calaghan, with my help to design the Cam and the slider mechanisms. Since it was posted on Youtube 11 years ago, and has since gained over 1 million views. It was inspired by a large Kinetic Sculpture “Round Wave” by Reubin Margolin, and has itself gone on to be much copied since.
Aran’s flapping bird – show’s the power of prototyping for learning about mechanism design.