In our regular daily life, I’m sure that we all have to get involve with the mechanism or machine by variety of reasons. The windshield wiper is one of my classic example. It consists of simple mechanism sitting under the car’s bonnet. You’ll be intrigued if you have a chance to learn how it works. First we have to design how all the parts, links, or the metal thingy work together to form the movement that you need, in this case, to wipe out the rain back-and-and-forth across your windshield. Then you have to find the way to move it!.

The excavator is another classic example. Its technology has not been changed for the past decade. Well, at least, in term of how to design the way it moves and how to make it moves. First we have to design how all the parts, links, or the metal thingy work together to form the movement that you need, … well in this case, to move the bucket around the area of interest. Then what? Then you have to find the way to move it!. 

Theoretically when people ask me about what it is that I teach in this class, I sometime say that I teach about “what” and “how” aspects of the motion of the mechanism or machine. I’m sorry that you have to hear these two words together all the time. You’ll see the reason behind it later. Here, “what” means what it is that makes the particular motion. And “how” means how to make things move as required.

Regarding to the connection of this course with the machine design subject area, recall that to design a machine, one needs to define the required motion, determine the needed power, and ensure the strength of parts and the machine as a whole, this course is taking care of the first two tasks which are the motion and the power.  Just to give you a better picture, consider an excavator, this course, we will learn about design the require motion and defining the required power, to ensure the required motion. But to complete the design process, one must further check the strength of all parts and elements those making up the machine. This latter part is not covered in this course.

I hope this short message does its job giving you the big picture about what we are about to do together here. I hope also that it can excite you to be ready for many more fun to come. 

Requirements

Basic Engineering Mechanics

Learning Outcomes (LOs)

• LO1 The student will be able to analyze and evaluate the motion of machine components. 
• LO2 The student will be able to use the tools and techniques learned in the course to design machine components for real world applications.