Mousetrap Final Report

Advaith Sethuraman

Samir “Sam” Thanawalla

Ashley Burbano

Ted Kang

Section C

Team 28

11/30/2017
A. Explanation of Other Designs

Our group thought of many designs before we finally landed

on our current one. One design utilized gears to operate the
wheels. The mousetrap would be placed in the center of a large
gear and the gears would be connected to the mousetrap and the
wheels. When the trap activates, the trap would turn the gear
and thus rotate the wheels; propelling the car forwards. But as
this would only move the car in one direction, we designed for
two gears to operate the car with one mousetrap pointing one way
and the other mousetrap pointing the other direction. The gears
would be aligned so that the teeth wouldn’t interfere with each
gears and the end of first mousetrap would trigger the start of
the second mousetrap. Another design consisted of using a
vertical platform for the car in order to allow the staff
connected to the mousetrap to travel further. As one of the
rules limited the how long the car was, we thought that this
would be a loophole to this rule. But extending the rod
vertically, we would, theoretically, have a much longer scope to
work in. But of course, this meant that the center of mass had
to be taken into consideration with every adjustment of the car
so this idea was quickly abandoned.
B. Description of Vehicle and Operation

Our car design features a three main components: the body,

the lever arm, and the reverse mechanic.

1. Body:
a. Our body consists of a lightweight acrylic cut
out. To remove most of the weight of the acrylic,
we have cut out holes throughout the frame which
reduces the frictional force and drag force. The
body connects to the wheels of the car through
bearings which reduces friction between the axle
and the body. To complete the entire track, we
have made the driving wheels larger than the
front wheels to increase the distance traveled.
For stability and alignment we have added rubber
bands to the rear wheels to imitate the rubber on
real world car wheels.
2. Lever Arm:
a. A wooden dowel acts as a lever arm to pull a
string that is wrapped around the axle. The dowel
is fixated to two mousetraps which pulls the arm
through a 180° arc enabling the string to rotate
the axle and push our car forward. For additional
acceleration we have added a rubber band to
assist the dowel in this arc by stretching the
rubber band around the dowel​’​s body and the frame.
3. Winding:
a. To travel the track, we wrap some of the string
around the axle in one direction then wrap the
remaining string around the axle in the opposite
direction. This ensures that as the lever arm
pulls the string, the axle will spin in one
direction then reverse and spin the other
direction allowing our car to reverse and finish
the track.
Operation:

The operation of our mousetrap car is very simple. We first

wind up the rear axle by winding the string in the forward
direction (over the axle) then wrap it around a nail and reverse
direction (under the axle). Then, once the lever arm is all the
way back, we place the car on the ground, making sure to align
it properly, then release the lever arm. Once this happens, the
car will proceed to move forward, then when it reaches the
turning point in the winding, it will move backwards back to the
start position.

C. Drawing with Multiple Views ​(Included)

D. Good and Bad

The first design review car involved an all-wood chassis

and a extremely long lever arm made out of wood. Furthermore,
the axle mount points for the wheels were simply tubes of
aluminum and the axles themselves were heavy steel rods. Spacers
for the wheels were zipties, and overall, the weight of the car
made it difficult for it to accelerate quickly.

Each of these deficiencies were addressed in the iterations

that followed.

1. Weight:
a. To address the issue of weight, we changed the
material the chassis was made out of. Instead of
basswood, we decided to use acrylic. This way, we
would be able to lasercut a light design and use glue
to keep the chassis together. Our weight reduction was
massive and we are able to travel faster.
2. Wheel Design:
a. Using a heavier wheel for a competition that relies on
speed is undesirable because the moment of inertia is
higher, which means that it will require more force to
turn. A lighter wheel with the mass mainly distributed
at the edges will be much easier to turn. In order to
fix this, we use Solidworks to lasercut our wheels in
order to be sturdier and easier to roll.
3. Bearings
a. To fix the issue of friction between the axles and the
bearings, we switched from using a metal tube to using
ball bearings. This way,we greatly reduce friction and
make sure the energy from the mousetrap is translated
to the movement of the wheels not lost to friction.

Now, our car averages in the range of 5.43 - 5.64 seconds

for the run. The good design features are that winding it up can
be done by one person, wheel are fairly well aligned so the car
goes straight, and the acrylic makes the car light enough to
travel quickly. We have also added larger diameter wheels for
the drive wheels which means that we get further distance
traveled per inch of string pulled, which means we can use a
shorter lever arm. By using a shorter lever arm, we are able to
get higher acceleration since torque = force x radius, and we
have a fixed torque, a shorter radius results in a larger force.
E. Performance Chart

Versi Tri Time Distance Notes

on # al (s) (ft)

1 1 5.32 12 CDS misaligned

1 2 3.89 8 CDS might be too heavy

1 3 8.02 10 Need to replace CDS

2 4 6.79 15 Acrylic laser cut wheels added

3 5 6.30 18 Shorter lever arm increased

speed

3 6 6.24 14 Car keeps sliding

4 7 6.17 18 Rubber bands added to wheels

4 8 6.21 22 Better consistency

5 9 5.43 27 Larger wheels made a big

difference

5 10 5.43 23 Marked winding reversal spot

5 11 5.47 19 Adjusted winding

5 12 5.49 21 Rubber bands taped to wheel

5 13 5.48 22 Slight misalignment

5 14 5.78 20 winding error

5 15 5.55 19 rubber bands fell off left

wheel

5 16 5.64 20 wheels dirty

5 17 5.59 20 rubber band fell off left wheel

causing sliding
Meeting 5 : 11/5/17

Ideas:
● Since our last meeting, we have decided that more drastic
changes are in order to get our mousetrap car at a competitive
state.
● We listed our ideas in the design notebook:
○ Lazer cut the chassis for more precision
○ Laser cut the wheels for perfect circular shape
○ Use ball bearings in order to make the axle-bearing
interface as smooth as possible and prevent internal
friction from slowing down the car.
○ Make the car as light as possible so that the force from
the mousetraps can be put to the ground as easily as
possible.

● We will be using Solidworks to design the chassis of our car.

This way, we can be sure of the consistency of the
manufacturing of our car.

Conceptualization:

● After finishing the CAD models for the car, we started to get
the part laser cut.
● We experienced many difficulties with getting the proportions
correct for the laser cutter. We wanted the car to be as light
as possible but were reminded that acrylic has a point at which
thin structures will break very easily. As a result, we created
a sturdier chassis with cutouts that reduced mass.
 ● Above is the .dxf file capture of the side rails. We made sure
to cut out unused parts of the rails while preserving the
integrity of the part.

● The rear wheel design only uses 2 spokes because we originally

had a 4 spoke design but eliminated two of them to save weight.
● Although we had other ideas, we decided to pursue this
prototype first, then make changes later.

Testing:
● During this meeting, we focused on designing the prototype.
After we laser cut the chassis, we did not immediately assemble
it.
● The majority of this meeting was spent in the cluster, so there
was no testing required.
Meeting 6: 11/12/17

Sketches:
Included

Ideas:
● After getting all the part laser cut, we were able to spend
around 20 minutes assembling our car. We purposefully designed
it to be simple to assemble, in case it breaks in the future.
● Some of the new ideas that came up while assembling the car
included adjusting the length of the lever arm (it is far too
long right now), adding some sort of friction to the rear
wheels.

Conceptualization:

● These are the iterations

for the wheel designs.
● We began with simply
acrylic, but realized that it
did not have enough friction to
result in meaningful
acceleration.
● We iterated on the wheel
design by adding duct tape to
the outsides of the wheels.
Although this was effective in
reducing slip during testing, we
decided that it still slipped
and we would use our final option, rubber bands.
● With the rubber bands, there is minimal slippage, which is good
for the acceleration and timing of the car.
● For comparison, we have our
first prototype’s wheel
compared to our current
wheel. Clearly, there is less
mass near the edges of the
wheel, which reduces our
moment of inertia, and in
turn results in less torque
needed to turn the wheel.
 ● This is our
finished prototype using
laser cut chassis. This
iteration on the
previous car includes
improvements such as
better fit and aligned
wheels and a larger rear
wheel diameter.

Testing:
● The first test we performed was a straight line 20 feet test.
This is the format of each of our tests for each of our car
prototypes because it lets us know many things;
○ If the car can go the full distance between the gates
○ If the car drives straight or crooked
○ Slippages between the wheel and the ground
● Test 1 Notes:
○ The car overshoots the 20 feet marker. This is probably
caused by the fact that we used a larger wheel radius and
a slightly longer lever arm from the previous iteration.
○ To fix: Decrease the lever arm, or wind the string
differently
● Test 2 Notes:
○ After fixing the lever arm and adding adjustable mounting
points for the string, we tested the car again.
○ This time, the car barely went over the 20 feet mark,
which is the result we wanted.
○ To fix: we have isolated distance in that it travels 20
feet. Another problem is that the car is veering slightly
to the right even with rubber bands. The easiest fix to
this is to figure out the alignment on the testing field.
● Test 3 Notes:
○ Since we know the car can do a straight line distance of
20 feet, we decided to try it with rewinding the string.
○ During the test, the car went forward fine, but when the
car switched directions, it ended up misaligning. Upon
further inspection, this was because when the car went
forward, it had a forward momentum but turning backwards
at such a short amount of time involved an impulse that
the car chassis was not prepared for. Since the impulse
acts on the center of gravity of the car, which is in the
front given by our design , the car uses the front two
wheels as a pivot point, and both back wheels come off the
ground. This results in major slippage and misalignment
○ To fix: since the majority of the mass of the car is in
the front part of it, the solution would be to add an
additional mass towards the rear of the car to move the
center of mass as far away from the fulcrum as possible.
We fixed this by adding a metric bolt on the third and
last mounting boom of our car.
Meeting 7: 11/20/17

Sketches: Included

Ideas:
● Since we added more mass in the last meeting, we decided to
increase the force of the mousetrap by adding a rubber band to
the lever arm. We mount the rubber band underneath the car and
wrap it around the lever arm.
● As a result, this gives us
more torque on the lever arm to
compensate for the added mass
from the bolt.

Conceptualization:
● After adding the rubber
band, there was not much work to
do. At this point, our car
worked with rewinding and the rubber band made it decently
fast.
● The only thing left to do was test the car extensively until we
got consistent with the alignment and timings.

Testing:
● Test 1 Notes:
○ The car moved forward and came backwards slightly curved.
Although the time was fast, one of the wheels missed the
last gate, which might result in a disqualification.
 ○ To fix: at this point, there is no hardware fix to the
issue. As a result, the person who is in the pit stop for
the car has to align the car properly every time.
● Test 2 Notes:
○ The car worked perfectly! We got a consistent time and the
alignment issues were resolved.
○ Further actions include continuous testing until something
goes wrong.
● Test 3 Notes :
○ For the previous tests, we were eyeballing the point at
which to rewind the string. However, since we get
inconsistencies, we decided to mark the spot using a blue
marker. As such, we make it much more intuitive for
getting the car set up.
○ We continued testing until the Makerspace closed, and we
are ready for Thursday!