Week 10

As planned on Monday, Marcel and I went to the open lab from 1 to 5 pm. Shaolin was unavailable but he gave us a heads up. In open lab, we smoothened out the circles that were the tires, using sandpaper.

We went on to glue the tires together; 4 by 4. We utilized clamps to help them dry and hold evenly.

Fig 1: Drying tires

After the tires dried, we cut holes through the center of the tires so then can go into the axle. We utilized a cordless drill to make this cut easy and uniform. The drill was tricky to use at first, that'swhy I 've uploaded a link to a video on how to use a cordless drill, in the tutorial bar.

Fig 2: Wheel in Axle

Fig 3: Cordless Drill

For the first time, the bike stood on all four wheels!

Fig 4: Bike standing.

With our bike finished, we had to take it back with us so we took down the tired to wrap the frame in plastic bags, as it was raining.

Fig 5: Rain protection!

Week 10

Week 10 started of with a very productive Sunday. Marcel and I met up Sunday night and went ahead to implement our idea from the previous week. With no other tool but a Swiss Knife, we had to work with that. It was surprisingly efficient.

We assembled the fork to the axle and attached it to the frame. It was finally beginning to look like a bicycle.We proceeded to make new tires because we realized that our current tires were way to large and not symmetrically round. The front and back fork was to be each consisted of two sets of wheels. Each set of wheels would have 3 pieces of circular cardboard glued together.  This took us over 3 hours but we had music in the background to make it worthwhile.

Fig 1: Bike without wheels

To make sure that our wheels were as similar as possible, we didn't do the final cut with the Swiss knife. We roughly cut it with the knife with intentions to smoothen it out with sand paper during the next open lab.

Fig 2: Roughly cut bike wheels

With all this done, we called it a night and planned to work on it in the open lab period on Monday.

Week 9 In-class Progress

Wow! Its already week 9! It seems like we started this project just 2 weeks ago. On Tuesday, as planned, we returned to Central receiving to see what they had  from us. Sadly there were no cardboard tubes in the recycling shipment that was about go out. We got a tall piece or refrigerator box cardboard instead.

In class on Friday, Shaolin was unavailable once again but we still maintained progress. We came up with a modification for the axle that would solve the initial problem.We got inspiration from the airplane and its landing gear. We proposed to have the axle split off into two wheels We went cracking at glueing as much as we possibly could  together to have the frame in one piece.

Fig 1: Airplane Landing gear

With less than a week to go  without the the final deliverable and with an uncompleted final video, we realized we had our work cutout for us.

Week 8 In-Class Progress

This week was quite an unproductive week for a number of reasons. Firstly, we still didnt have our tube for the axle and the reality of time was ever glaring upon us. Secondly, during our two hour lab, Katie wasnt available and we had a substitute who was not given acess to the storage room. As a result, we couldnt get out supplies to work on anything. Shaolin was also unavailable so Marcel and I (David; Primary Blogger) had to work double time.

What we did instead was to recap on the process so far and to brainstorm on an easier method to do the wheel and axle. We also went to central recoevong to see if we could get some nice, strong tubes. We were not sucessful and were asked to come back on Tuesday of the folowing week. Class ended on a quite unproductive note which were not too happy about.

Week 7 In Class Progress

Before class today, we had to hand in the Final Draft Proposal which we met up during the week to work on. It didn't take us too long to get it done as we had learnt from the technical mistakes in the Design Proposal. In class today, we had to look for some more cardboard to cut the wheels from. We ended up in the Main building once again. We found cardboard and finished with the wheels.

Now, we had to look for another cylindrical cardboard tube that would be the fork. We were still not lucky once again. We encountered another issue with the while and axle.With our current design, the wheels are going to be bouncing around but we modified it so that they are tight in place.

This week was kind of slow for the group. Our progress was inhibited by the lack of equiptments to work with.

Week 6 In class Progress

Today we went cracking on fitting the cylindrical cardboard tube through the triangular support in the frame. Making a hole in the side of the triangular support wasn't as easy as it originally seemed because we couldn't just draw a  circle in the side of the triangle and cut it out. It was more of an eclipse shape because it went in at an angle.

With both of them in, we could start work on the wheels which were 20 cm in radius since we were yet to get another cylindrical tube of a smaller radius than the one in the frame to act the bike fork.We stuck 6 circular pieces of cardboard to make on tire. Additionally, we intend to make the triangular frame stronger by adding triangular slabs of paper-mache mold at intermittent positions within the frame.

Brief History

The first bicycle was built in 1418 by Giovanni Fontana. It had four wheels back in that time. There was a rope connected between gears and wheels. The first sketch of bicycle with two wheels was presented in 1493 by Leonardo da Vinci, which was proved false. However, bicycle did show up at that point.

Later on there was like hoax built in 1791 and a running machine called “danny horse”(Bicycle History (& Human Powered Vehicle History) built in 1817. It was pretty similar to the modern bike, and this is the first time two wheels bicycle model was invented.

As people keep developing the model, here came all kinds of designs.

Finally, bicycle became the shape we used today.

Works Cited

"Bicycle History (& Human Powered Vehicle History)." Bicycle History Timeline. N.p., n.d. Web.     07 May 2015.

"The Leonardo Da Vinci Bicycle Hoax  ." Leonardo Da Vinci Bicycle Hoax. N.p., n.d. Web. 07         May 2015.