Alvaro's Crane

The finished crane

I wanted you to know how the 1st of ESO B students managed to make technology works in Colegio Zuloaga. We have built so far 3 of 10 machines invented by Da Vinci. They are not too complex mechanisms (as it seems to me), made by plastic parts. In this second blog, I'll explain how we made the crane.

The crane was our first construction, so we found it very difficult, especially because we didn’t have any previous experience or any idea about how it was done. This was the reason that we strictly follow the instructions and although we were slow, we did very well done.
In this project I had a problem with my group, so I was changed to another. Despite those little incidents, we didn’t have more problems.
As I said in the catapult blog, our teacher helped us a lot with their explanations.

Forces:

5 types of forces

-Tension; the rope is subjected to this force.
-Compression force; the pillar that holds the crane is subjected to this force.
-Sheed; the pieces when snapping.
-Bending; any elongated part fastened by both ends.
-Obviously stress force; nearly all the pieces subjected to some kind of force.


It is nearly the same type of structure than the catapult: It is a shell, fixed structure with fixed-end and simply supported beams. It has pillars and columns.

The catapult is a mechanism that uses:
-A block and a tackle; a combination of pulleys interconnected by a rope, basically what the crane is.
-Pulleys; a grooved wheel attached to an axis. This form the block and tackle.
-A drum hoist; cylinder onto one end of a crank is fitted. Enables us to lift heavy loads.
-A gear; a wheel with teeth along its perimeter.
-A connecting rod sytem; conected to the crank and to the gear.

The End