2020 was a year of many hardships. While working from home, I was constantly exposed to our photo wall on our refrigerator, since it was getting much more use than a typical non-work-from-home lifestyle. On it was happy memories, mostly taken with a borrowed Fujifilm Instax camera during whichever occasion. Why is this piece of archaic technology the best at freezing time, I wondered... Having a physical photo was just so appealing. Luckily Fujifilm has a printer for your phone! But I wanted for my partner to be able to keep a few of these photos handy, wherever she worked.
My idea was to create an analog "digital" photo frame to compliment the analog photos she would be receiving for her birthday. Something where she could push a button and it would flip to the next photo.
The Fujifilm Instax printer for digital photos to be transferred to analog format, along with the completed photo flipper.
The mechanism works similarly to that of a click pen, which I am familiar with from my experience at Papermate. There are 4 main interacting components: button, ratchet, guide, and spring. The button is what the user pushes, and is always trying to spin the ratchet half way using a ramped surface interface. It is being stopped by the guide. But once the button and ratchet together are pushed deep enough to clear the guide, the ratchet is free to rotate that half turn. Upon release of the button, angled surfaces at the tip of the guide and the angled surfaces on the ratchet allow for the completion of the turn when pushed back to its original position by the spring.
The size of the box is defined by the photo size. The ratchet spacing of 90 degrees is defined by the number of photos to fit in the box. The spring force was determined by ease of user push force, and the ramp angles were defined by the spring force. Grease was added to help lubricate the components because of the layering resolution of the FDM printer.
Key Takeaways:
• Spinning mass carries momentum, and could rotate the entire product when locking into place
• Applying mechanisms and concept from well-known product to new ideas
• Angled sliding surfaces could benefit from a tilted build orientation to favor the direction of contact
• Friction can be increased by FDM manufacturing step heights