Blog 1:⚙️GEARS ARE TURNING⚙️

WELCOME BACK TO MY BLOG!!!!!!! 🎉🎉

Did you miss me? 🥹 It’s been SO long since the last post that I’ve already started a brand-new module: Chemical Product Design & Development or as the people who write blog and don't want to spell everything out say, CPDD. And you know the drill:

new module = new GAHD! Cue dramatic music 🎶

🛠️ GAHD: Goals, Aspirations, Hopes & Dreams 💭

GOAL: To improve my Arduino coding wizardry 🧙‍♂️, mastering gear ratios like a math ninja 🧮, and building gear trains that could make Transformers jealous. 💪

Hopes:🤞 That my bioreactor doesn’t go boom and works just as planned. 💀💀

Aspirations:🌱 To bring my algae bioreactor to life in the future!

Dreams:⭐ TO GET THAT DISTINCTION!!!

This is was what ChatGPT said when I asked for GAHD.💀💀💀

Now that I covered the GAHD its time for the D&F.

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D&F: Definitions & formulae

Pitch Circular Diameter, PCD:

The diameter of the pitch circle—an imaginary circle that runs through the middle of every gear tooth. It’s like the red carpet for gears: all the teeth walk it. 🦷

Number of Teeth (Z):

just count the teeth and voilà! No calculus required, promise. 😌(No need to overthink it. Just count and smile. 😁)

Gear module, m: 

The "tooth size factor." Think of it as the shoe size for gears—bigger m, chunkier teeth. 🦷⚡ Larger gears = more chompy power. Big teeth energy, anyone? 🦖

Relationship between all of them:

Here’s where they become BFFs

PCD = m × Z

Translation: The pitch circle diameter depends on how big the teeth are (m) and how many teeth there are (Z). Bigger teeth or more teeth = bigger PCD. Simple math, just gearified. 🧮✨

Torque (T):

Torque is the rotational equivalent of force. It’s what makes things turn with power, measured in Newton-meters (Nm). Think of it as the muscle behind the motion—more torque = more strength to rotate heavy stuff. 💪

Rotational Speed (RPM):

RPM stands for "revolutions per minute"—a fancy way to say how many times something spins in one minute. Higher RPM = faster rotation = more zoom-zoom. 🚀✨

Relationship Between Torque (T) & Rotational Speed (RPM):

Here’s the juicy part: torque and speed have an inverse relationship. When one goes up, the other comes down. It’s like a seesaw

Gear ratio (or Speed Ratio):

The magic number that defines how two gears interact. There are a few ways to look at it:

TL;DR: Bigger output gear teeth or slower output RPM = more torque. Translation: If you want big power, sacrifice some speed. ⚡💪

This also shows that a higher gear ratio means more torque at the output gear while a lower speed ratio means a higher RPM for the output gear.

Let’s get practical, because gears in motion > gears on paper. It’s time to lift bottles and spin fans like engineering student that dont have anything better to do!📈

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Practical moving gears

In the practical we constructed a gear train🚂 to lift a water bottle 🆙

At the ungodly hour of 4am, half-asleep and fully overconfident, I did some rough gear ratio calculations. Above is my initial doodle, straight out of a sleep-deprived genius session. My teammates put their faith in this math (why, I’ll never know 🤷‍♂️), but then... our TE Meng Choo decided to make us question our existence. 😩Cue a solid 30 minutes of recalculating, doubting, and finally coming full circle:26.67—again. 💀

Below is a more detailed diagram with a better explanation of the calculation

The reason why the calculation is so weird is because there were compound gears which make it significantly harder to understand what is going on if you want to understand it more I feel this video is a good watch. Below is our arrangement of gears.

Fun Fact Alert! 🤓

There are 4790001600 possible ways to arrange these gears  🤯

And this isn’t some random number i got by keyboard smash like the number 19 ;

it’s legit. Here’s how you calculate it:

1. Count the compound gears: 4.

2. Multiply that by 2.

3. Add the remaining regular gears: 12 total.

4. Take the Factorial of 12 (12!): 4,790,001,600 ways.

Mind blown? Same here. 🤯✨

Now finally the moment you all have been waiting for the video of the gear train in action!!!!!🔥🔥🔥

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Practical gears in fan

Next, we took things up a notch and built a hand-operated fan. Yes, you heard that right a fan powered by your own two hands. (Take that, electricity bills! 💡💸)

In the video above you can see YS make the fan spin and experience the great winds💨 it creates

For this blog I need to come up with an improved fan design and sketch it out. But let’s be real—I suck at drawing. ✏️🙅‍♂️ So, my solution? Make the fan bigger (because bigger is always better, right? 😏) add a fan cage for safety and change the the blades to a more efficient design. And all I need to do is find some similar design and boom.💥 no sketching required.

I propose a fan cage as fingers can get in the way of the blade(Ouch💢) which is bad. I also think that if you make the fan bigger the more air it can push and the better it will be.And lastly if the blades are changed to be more efficient more powerful winds could be generated by the fan. Below is a diagram that I totally came up with and didn't just copy paste from this guy

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Learning Reflection

This practical journey? Whew, what a ride! 🎢 To say the least, it was... an experience. 😅

Let’s get real—the most annoying part wasn’t even the gear calculations (shockingly). Nope, it was writing this blog. 💀 Spending almost 16 hours on this (and not in a fun way, like gaming 🎮 or binge-watching Netflix 📺) had me questioning all my life choices. Why chemical engineering? Why gears? Why blogs?! 🤔 Existential crisis: unlocked. 😭

But hey, not everything was doom and gloom! The silver lining of this ordeal was discovering the crazy, wacky, and downright brilliant things people do with gears. I mean, who knew a literal gear train could exist? 🚂⚙️ (chef’s kiss to whoever designed that masterpiece).

If there’s one thing I’m taking away from this, it’s that I need believe in the math. 😅😅 When our TE bamboozled us into redoing our calculations, I didn’t mind spending 30 minutes recalculating—it felt like a test of our resolve. But honestly? If we’d just trusted my original calculations (hello, 26.67!), we’d have wrapped up faster and go home earlier 💡 Lesson learned: Trust the math and trust myself! 💪✨

Even though this blog felt like torture at times, I’m grateful for what I’ve learned. Whether it’s trusting myself more, exploring the quirky world of gears, or just appreciating the effort behind engineering design, I’m walking away from this experience a little wiser.

Well that's all from me folks Byeeeeeeeee👋🏼👋🏼👋🏼👋🏼👋🏼👋🏼👋🏼👋🏼👋🏼👋🏼👋🏼👋🏼👋🏼👋🏼

(I have said the word gear 33 times in this blog)