We have learnt how to make paper springs, and other mechanisms including the birthday box. We have honed our skills at cutting, colouring, mechanism construction, and accurate paper measuring.
Our final products, were 4 cards, which each had a separate paper engineering mechanism in them. They were made out of card and paper, as well as plastic and thick card. All of the cards worked in the end, although we had to make some adjustments in the construction process.
I wouldn’t hire the company, because the quality is not good enough to be in shops. This is because the colouring in was done with pencils, and it didn’t look as professional as printing. But apart from that, I think I would hire our company. To mass-produce our products, we would be able to produce most of the parts on the computer, and print lots of them out, but a lot of the construction would have to be done by hand.
We found a problem with the Christmas card at first, because we didn’t know how to create a proper tab and move mechanisms. After we had read it in the textbook, we were able to make it successfully. All of the other cards worked at first, but we had to change them to make them more efficient. One of the greatest successes while creating our cards was the birthday box mechanism, and how far it went out of the card sometimes. Another is when we finally got the Santa card to work properly, because it looked very professional.
We enjoyed the project on the whole, although there were sometimes arguments about who was going to do what. I think our team worked well together mainly.
We used 4 different mechanisms in the end. These include;
-The beak shape 3D card – for an Easter chick
-A unique springing box mechanism, inspired by the Orange advertisement.
-A Tab and moving object mechanism for the Santa card
-A second page with little springs mechanism for the get well soon card.
We Used ICT to create this PowerPoint presentation, with information about the products, but as far as actually making the products is concerned, it was all done by hand. We could draw all the pictures on the computer and print them out to make the work look neater.
We could make them out of thicker card, and colour them before they are constructed. We could also use a wider range of mechanisms, or some more complicated ones to make the cards more interesting. We could also use more than one mechanism for each card.
