Our Cam Mechanism Toys

This month we have been making toys with a cam mechanism. To start with we did work in maths to prepare ourselves for measuring accurately. Mrs Morgans gave us amounts to measure, we had to make sure we were really accurate, some of us even measured using inches! Next, we looked at cam toys from different schools like comprehensive schools and we said which one we liked the best and wrote about it. After that we went on the Internet to see how a cam toy works and how the shape of the cam affects the movement.

We designed what our cam toy would look like. We were then put in to different groups of three's or four's and we picked our favourite design, which was Santa popping in and out of the chimney with a drop cam. The design for the actual shoe box was a house and a chimney on top so it looked like a proper house.

To make it,first we had to gather up everything we needed like: 
a cam
a pivot
some followers 
a handle
and 2 shoe box's

The success criteria that we decided upon was to measure accurately, to work collaboratively in groups and to follow the planned method.

The next thing to do was fix it all together.To fix it together we had to get the two shoe boxes cut one in half and put the one in half inside the whole one. Using two shoe boxes gave the structure stability. We then made holes in the shoe boxes and stuck the followers through the holes but the sides had to be equal otherwise it would not work. We then got the followers cut and put the cam on the follower and we stuck the pivots on. Then all we had left to do was stick the chimney on and Santa on to the follower and we were done. 

We all really enjoyed doing it and found it a really fun activity.


By Bethany and Megan