Wheel of Accessories

Hi I'm Maggie, I'm 17 and a student at Staten Island Technical High School.

For this woodworking project I’ve decided to make a Ferris wheel. I was inspired by the idea of a lazy Susan which takes a lot of space in the fridge, so I though instead of spinning around the x-axis what about spinning around the y-axis. I looked online for wooden wheels and the ones online are mostly all for display so I wanted to see if I could make use of the wheel. The ones online are also really complicated and take a lot of space. I wanted to scale the project down because I feel like if it's too big it becomes less decorated and more like a hassle. I want to design something simple yet useful. My main focus was to make sure the wheel spun effortlessly because if it didn’t the wheel wouldn’t be convenient and would just end up collecting dust. 

Auto CAD

Laser Cutter

Wood

Wood Glue

Wooden Dowels

Hair Clips

First I started off by helping myself visualize the parts I'm gonna need and what my overall idea for the project was going to look like. I drew each cart and realized that because I can't control the thickness of the wood I'm going to have to use multiple pieces stacked to add thickness to it so that it can actually hold something. In addition I use this time to get measurements of how big I want each piece. I try to use the sketch as a general guide for myself.

For the design process I started out trying to copy a traditional Ferris wheel with the circular outer ring but ultimately ended up getting rid of it to make it more functional and accessible. I designed all three on AutoCAD to be laser cut out later. I’ve seen people make similar things with popsicle sticks which would have been easier but that means that I don’t really get to control the size and the design of the Ferris wheel. The second design I tried to have each of the six edges poke out of the ring but I wanted both of them to be different pieces. I think I decided to not go with this because I'm using more wood for the cost of making it look a little more complex. For the last design I went with something super simple. Two pieces for the wheel and two for the base. The shape of the sides of the wheel was the part that took the longest because I couldn’t get the shape that I liked and I kept trying it over and over again.

For the laser cutter which we use 11 by 11 sized wood for, I rearranged all the pieces I needed into squares to make it easier to transfer to the machine. Making sure that I had selected every tiny little line when moving things around in Cad is something that I had to be aware of because missing a line means that the piece wouldn't fully be cut, in turn making it hard to remove. After getting all the pieces cut I laid them all out so that I could separate the parts into groups. On the left were the base and the wheel itself which I put aside to work on the carts first.

The first thing I did was make all the carts because they had the most pieces. I glued the 4 smaller rings together to form the middle of the cart. Added a front and a back to the stack to make what is shown in the picture. It was hard working with something that small especially because I wanted to be very precise and make sure all the pieces were perfectly aligned with each other. I repeated that 6 times for the 6 carts pressing everything together with wood glue. While trying to assembly everything I ran into a small problem where the holes that I cut out were bigger than the dowels which meant that my structure wouldn't be sturdy because nothing them was holding them in place.

I tried to think of the easiest way to fix the loose dowels. I thought of using cardboard and cutting a small hole in it putting the dowels through so they wouldn't move. I decided to not use carboard because I would have to individually cut out all the pieces and I felt that it wouldn't look uniformed with me cutting out all the pieces. I decided to use wood and just cut a hole that fit perfectly while gluing it to where the previous hole is so it covers the mistake and solves the issue.

After I cut out smaller rings I glues each dowel to the smaller ring. After I glued that onto the main part of the wheel trying to line the centers up on both sides so that it would be even when I put the whole thing together. I started off by using a bottle just to hold it up and then when I got to the last 2 carts because it would no longer balance I started to work with the wheel laying down. I attached the base the same way I attached the carts. After letting it dry for a couple minutes I started to spin it testing if there was any issue with it getting stuck or not spinning property or giving a lot of resistance.

One big concern was I though that the carts would get stuck and not sway while the wheel spun to always be right side up. It worked out pretty well that I cut the original holes too big because there was less friction stopping the carts from moving. After a couple skins the wheel kept getting stuck on either side of the base. The outer ring holding the dowel kept getting stuck in the cut out of the base. It was because the wheel kept moving towards one side and the friction would stop the spin. So I decided to cut out two more rings that tightly fit around the dowel so that the wheel wouldn't move at all in turn helping it from getting stuck.

After adding the rings the wheel spun with ease. I added hair clips in each part to test out if it can actually be useful. After putting it in the carts I realized that maybe I should've made the parts a little bigger because with how thin it is it isn't that easy to grab or put something in the carts. Maybe it would be better for smaller kids. I also realized that the clips I brought weren't all the same, some were too big and they were built different so some carts were heavier than others which made it spin with resistance. It would spin backwards when after I let go. If I added clips that were all similar weight I think it would have worked better but overall I still really like it. I think with the way it is now I would only use it to hold lightweight clips that are relatively the same size and weight or just as décor because its's still fun to spin around.

Finishing a project is always very rewarding because its your work in front of you that you created from start to finish. There were a lot of learning curves in this process and even though I "finished" there is always more that can be done to improve the model. I will continue to work with 3D modeling and continue to improve so that I can create more advanced models in the future. I enjoyed the whole process a lot being able to see something go from an idea into reality. Thank you for reading through my project and hopefully you like it as much as I do.