Working Model

Coming back to school after winter break before university classes began, STEM students were rotated through stations meant to challenge the mind and get people back into the groove of school. One station I (Kyle) was placed in was the engineering room where I was tasked with designing and building something to present to Goodyear. Since it would be hard to convey how a loom works through words and blueprints were already created, I decided to create a small, working loom which could be passed around during the Capstone presentation in April. Making a working model would also confirm Ian and my belief that our design would be successful.

While the actual loom is designed to be 8ft long, a small, smooth board was found in the engineering room and cut to 1' x 6", making a perfect 8:1 scale. At this small of scale, it was unreasonable to make fourteen holes in each wall. Instead, only six holes were made. In addition, no eye-hooks could found to tie the string to. To simplify the model, the stationary strands of string were simply hot glued to the board on each side. The moving pieces were hot glued at the back, but were held by a counterweight in the front instead of the spring mechanism. Popsicle sticks held the walls together and created the rail system (friction keeps the moving wall in place). Hot glue and one screw held everything together.

Using a long piece of string, a 4"x 4" square was woven using this small model. The fabric held together after being prodded at, meaning that it is at least somewhat durable. The loom design is proven to be successful, and we can't wait to build it on a full scale. A few things were learned during the course of this build. First of all, the string in the front does not move as much as expected. This means that the only advantage of the spring system is to keep tension. As complicated as that section of the loom would be to build on a full scale, it was decided to scrap that in favor of a simple counterweight tied to the back of the shifting string. In addition, dimensions of the walls were able to be derived from this model. The moving wall will be a little over 3' tall and shift up another 3'. Both stationary walls will be approximately four feet tall. While Ian and I were debating about how to hold the moving wall in place, this model gave us the idea of using magnets to achieve this. Four neodymium magnets have been found which should have enough strength to hold the wall in the air via a roof of the rail frame. The only problem found by using this small model was that the outside strings would bend inward as the piece of cloth was being made. It is unknown whether or not this will happen on a larger scale, and what to do to solve the problem.