The Chinese Dragon

Spring 2021

Description: This was the final project for Component Design. In this project, a team of 6 Mechanical Engineering students, including myself, designed, fabricated, and assembled an electro-mechanical kinetic sculpture: a Chinese Dragon Automata. The principal objective is to create a desktop-size structure that simulates the movement of a Chinese Dragon. Powered by a DC electric motor, a shaft rotates with cams attached to it. Due to the off-center position of the cams on the shaft, each revolution makes a piston (in itself linked to the cams) move up and down. By multiplying this system with cams at different angles, the pistons imitate the movement of a wave, similar to that of a dragon.

My role: I was the Project Manager, and applied and developed leadership and prototyping skills.