Day 7: More Birds!

Today we get to present our birds in class! My partner, Lisa, and I fully assembled our bird the day before, and we ran into a few complications. The "body" we made for our bird didn't fit quite perfectly, so we had to make a few modifications. First, when we turned the crank our wings were too close to the backs of the two support pieces we made for them, and so we had to sand down the edges to make them rounded which made it easier for the wings to turn. We then decided to make the two piano wires we press-fitted into the Delrin rod at the wings closer together so that the wings wouldn't wobble around. This helped a little, but as we kept cranking the mechanism we realized that the tips of the wings kept tapping the table. It wasn't really a huge deal, but it bothered us enough that we sawed off the last part of the wings. This solved our problems, and we could decorate our bird! Since the Delrin is white, we decided to just stick with white and made our bird into a swan, naming it Natalie (if you've seen Black Swan, you understand).

Cute, right? We certainly like her. Some thoughts after assembly: I'm officially a huge fan of the piano wire. It's so easy to work with, and doesn't require reprinting all of your parts on the laser printer each time you need to change something. However, I would not recommend using the piano wire method if precision is imperative. The drill doesn't drill the same way each time, and the holes can be off if it doesn't go in straight. For our purposes, it was great.