At this stage, ambulance you have defined the technical specifications of the mechanical system you have to design. You should have a good overview of the “state-of-the-art” of similar machines available on the market. Make a chart (Excel table) with the technical features (load, size, mass, power, price, …) of the models that you have identified. From these data, provide some graphs like power vs load. You will be able to locate the equipment you design in this range.

It is now time to define your machine.

It is interesting to search for patents. The website of the department of machine design and production engineering provides useful links. Google Patents has a nice interface able to retrieve pdf documents.

Draw a kinematic diagram of your system. Define a coordinate system and refer to x, y and z axes when you describe the operation segment of your mechanical system. We defined 2D and 3D symbolic representations of kinematic pairs in the machine design course. Use them as far as possible but do not hesitate to draw an explicit contour of a part to improve the understanding. The kinematic diagram is a way of expression and is not an additional constraint. The purpose is to understand how the parts are joined together through kinematic pairs.

Tip: draw on blank paper and not on grid paper: you will be able to reproduce your free-hand drawing in your last report (this will be highly appreciated as pencil-aided design is more favorable to creativity than computer-aided design).