Building it Out
It's time to step away from the prototype and move towards a finished-looking product. Since I've also discovered that driving the mouse ball from the outer rim of my pulley causes the ball to spin too fast, I've decided to track the rotation at the shaft instead. This means I need the shaft to be attached to the pulley rather than spinning freely through its center.
I built another model in sketchup to understand how the pieces were going to fit together (and also to beef up my sketchup chops -- bad idea, but I have a nice illustration now). [ later realization: one thing that's important to remember about these exercises is to continually question major time investments --at their outset and throughout the process... Is this the real problem that needs to be solved? Is there any easier way to get the effect I'm going for? Is this essential to the project? Is this part of the essence of the project? ]
Now that we're getting down to the wire, I'm committed to cardboard as a building material, mostly as an aesthetic choice, but also because there is not enough time for me to learn the AMS laser cutting process. Prototyping in cardboard can be fast, but constructing in cardboard can be time-consuming.
