Engineer's toy

grabcad

As a Mechanical Engineering student at São Judas Tadeu University in Brazil, Felipe de Lima Costa aimed to create a toy exhibiting infinite motion. He utilized the principles of gyroscopes on geneva wheels and propellers to convey movement, with two balls moving through a lane. Drawing inspiration from Newton's law stating that a moving body tends to remain in motion, he sought to represent an endless cycle of rotation. However, friction and transmission load loss inevitably lead to eventual stops. For his project, ABS and ABS-PC materials were used for 3D printing, with precise gaps of 0.1 mm. To initiate the cycle, a string must be wound around the gyroscope disc like a spinning top and pulled, generating the spin.