Kestrel Hall Museum of InventionHands-On Mechanisms Gallery
TO Contract exhibit designers
RE Working models for Brown's 507 Mechanical Movements
DUE
The ask
Our Mechanisms Gallery is built around Henry T. Brown's 1868 book, Five Hundred and Seven Mechanical Movements. Right now the gallery is framed engravings behind glass. Visitors look, read the caption, and walk on. Almost none of them understand what they just saw.
We're rebuilding it so every engraving hangs next to a working model the visitor can turn with their own hands. Pick one of Brown's movements and build us that model. It has to do exactly what the drawing does, and it has to survive being handled by strangers all day.
The hook
A visitor who has never seen it before picks it up and runs it. It moves the way Brown drew it, every cycle, without sticking and without instructions.
Requirements
One movement from Brown's 507, reproduced faithfully — same input motion, same output motion. Designed in Onshape so our staff can open, edit, and reprint any part. Printed in PLA on our in-house printers; TPU only where a part must flex, and only with approval. Fastened with stock hardware from our exhibit shop: M2, M3, or M4 screws, washers, nuts, and heat-set inserts. Superglue only for joints that never need to come apart. Every part printable with minimal support material. Nothing sharp, nothing that pinches a finger, nothing small enough to walk off in a pocket.
On repairs
Exhibits break. When one does, our technician needs to find the right file, print it, and swap the part in an afternoon. That's why we require version numbers in every part name, clean STL files, and assembly notes. A model we can't repair is a model we can't use.
Deliver to us
- A research report and dimensioned hand sketch — due
- The Onshape document, shared to the 507 Movements assignment, with STL files — due
- A record of every prototype: photos, problems, fixes, and print settings
- The working model
- A 5-minute presentation to our gallery team on
Everything you need to build this — tolerances, printing rules, hardware sizes, and how you'll be scored — is on the project page.
