For my project I had to make something that could hold somewhere from 40 t0 50 of each american coin. I decided that I wanted to add another element because I thought just a holder would be very boring. My idea was to make an automatic coin sorter that could also hold the coins. From another previous student I saw that they had already made a coin sorter so I wanted something different. Their coin sorter worked in one direction so I wanted to make mine cooler than just a line.
When first opening inventor I was looking at tools I was unfamiliar with to see if I could use anything and I came across the coil command. I decided that I would make a coin sorter where the coin would slide down a coil and drop down in each spot it was meant to.
I started by creating a line and a box on the same plane then using the coil command and clicking on the line I want it to revolve around. I then changed the pitch and height to make it steep but not to steep and to make sure it only went 360 degrees.
then I used the plane tool to add a circle on the bottom of the coil (what I wanted to be the storage area). then I had my basic shape of my project.
In order for the coins to be separated all the coins had to run over each hole from smallest to largest so the large coins would go over the small holes, that order is dime, penny, nickle, and quarter. So I went to the U.S. Mints website to collect the diameter of each coin. In order to to make sure the coins went in a circle around the coil I added a cylinder in the middle and from the edge of that circle I started making sketches of the diameters of the coins. Afterwards I extruded them down through the coil to make the hold to the cylinder base.
From there I thought that I had finished but then I took a second look. Where I could hold the coins wasn't big enough to hold 50 quarters and I couldn't make it taller due to the height restriction of 5 inches.
I had to completely redraft.
Instead this time when making the coil I used a triangle so that the coins are pushed towards the inside and the holes.
I had to completely redraft.
Instead this time when making the coil I used a triangle so that the coins are pushed towards the inside and the holes.
The new idea I had was instead of making a circle base was to have a rectangle in the center with a raft of each edge facing four different directions. this way when they fall in a hole they will shoot in different directions.
this way the coins can move in a horizontal direction meaning I could expand my design to the sides, this way I could make little bowls off to the side to catch the coin and the bowls could hold a lot more coins. From here I decided my design was finished and to do some simple touch ups I filleted a lot of the edges just to make it look nicer.
I then put it into the maker bot software and changed the scale and orientation, then I set it to smart extruder + and I also turned on the support check box because the coil was otherwise unsupported.
The print took 14 hours and I let it go over the weekend so I only got a picture of the beginning but when I came back the next week it was finished and looked really cool.
I had to remove all the support material which was a big pain but when I finished I had my project.
Doing some reflection on my project I wish I would have added an edge to my coil because I didn't factor in how little friction there would be between the coins and the filament. I thought they would go decently slow but in reality they went very fast. The dime goes into the right bowl 99% of the time but the quarter made it into the hole 0% of the time because while it was going towards the whole and it flung out the side. Another change I would make is to make the height of the coil smaller to also decrease a little bit of the speed because sometimes the coins were just flying right over the holes.