A unique guide that covers the practical principles of mechanical design and how they can be applied

In Making Things Move, you’ll learn how to create moving mechanisms using clear, non-technical explanations, examples, and hands-on projects. These projects range from artistic installations to toys to useful inventions, and include a drawing machine, a mini wind turbine, and a mousetrap powered car. You’ll learn a wide range of skills, from attaching couplers and shafts to motors to converting between rotary and linear motion. The only limit to what you can create is your imagination.

Discover how to:

• Find and select materials
• Fasten and join parts
• Measure force, friction and torque
• Understand mechanical and electrical power, work and energy
• Create and control motion
• Work with bearings, couplers, gears, screws, and springs
• Combine simple machines for work and fun

This book is filled with photographs, drawings, and screenshots of the components and systems you’ll be working with. It focuses on using ready-made components whenever possible, and most projects use common materials like metal, plastic, wood, and cardboard, as well as simple fabrication techniques like laser cutting. Each chapter includes small projects to help you practice what you’ve learned, and later in the book, you’ll tackle more involved projects that incorporate material from multiple chapters.

Making Things Move:

• Focuses on practical applications and results, not abstract engineering theories
• Contains more than a dozen topic-focused projects and three large-scale projects incorporating lessons from the whole book
• Features shopping lists and guides to off-the-shelf components for the projects
• Incorporates discussions of new fabrication techniques such as laser cutting and 3D printing, and how you can gain access
• Includes online component for continuing education with the book’s companion website and blog (makingthingsmove.com)

-Hands-on coverage of moving mechanisms
-Introduction to Mechanisms and Machines
-Materials and Where to Find Them
-Screwed or Glued? On Fastening and Joining Parts
-Forces, Friction and Torque (Oh My)
-Mechanical and Electrical Power, Work, and Energy
-Eeny, Meeny, Miny, Motor? – Creating and Controlling Motion
-The Guts: Bearings, Bushings. Couplers, and Gears
-Rotary vs. Linear Motion
-Automatons and Mechanical Toys
-Making Things and Getting Them Made
-Projects

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