The Archimedes screw is a water pump that allows water to be raised from a lower to higher elevation. It consists of a central shaft with a helical surface, which itself sits within a cylindrical channel. Your challenge, should you choose to accept it, is as follows:
- Design an assembly for the Archimedes screw capable of lifting water a vertical height of 1.5 meters. The assembly should contain at least one mechanism connection. Your Archimedes screw does not have to resemble those in any of the images here.
- It can be either hand-operated or motor-driven. (The motor can be represented by a simple box part model.)
- Create a rendered image of your model.
- (Optional) Create a Kinematic Analysis using the Mechanism Design Extension (MDX) and output a movie of the playback. Note that every license of Creo Parametric comes with MDX.
- (Optional) Create a rendered animation of the motion using the Design Animation Option (DAO). Every license of Creo Parametric comes with DAO.
In your submission, please indicate the version of Creo Parametric that you used to create your model.
This challenge was inspired by an Archimedes screw on display at the Pacific Science Center in Seattle:
Please submit a zip file of your submission as a reply to this post. If you choose to submit an assembly file only (no rendered image, rendered animation, or kinematic analysis movie), don’t forget to embed the components.
The submission period will end on Friday, September 8th.
Find the PTC Creo Community Challenge Guidelines here!
I am going to be brave and be the first to post a model. Whil not quite complete, (no hardware and other finishing touches) here is what I created:
Creo 7.0 files attached.
Still need to figure out why the renderer adds the speckles...
Real time rendering works fine
Dear PTC Community,
Hope you are doing well !
Thank you for arranging this activity, Here is my attempt to complete this challenge.
It's kind of "Eureka" moment for me to post the solution. (I don't literally mean 😁 like what Archimedes said to world by uttering "Eureka" back in ancient time)
This design is attempted to complete in basic mechanical design manner, which is followed in industry, can be considered as purely a concept design only and it is inspired to use "PTC Creo Parametric" basic and some special modules, ex. AFX/IFX., Render Studio & Mechanism Design/Design Animations. During this design, some machine elements like Bearings, couplings and Motor has been used as step files derived from common platforms like McMaster-Carr and manufactures online CAD-configurators (for electric motor & bearing) Selection & modeling of auxiliary components, geometry size is for visual purpose only, that does not involve any calculated results (except a 1.5-meter lift height as parameter to consider while modeling)
Whereas creating rendered video which is posted above was little challenging in the absence of recommended & supported GPU memory.
Overall assignment in this challenge also gives further task to understand the options used in detail. It was great learning experience.
Creo Parametric 9.0.4.0 version is used in this activity.
Thanks to everyone for participating. The challenge is now closed.
I am writing up the results. If you submitted an entry and would like me to use your real name instead of your PTC Community username, please send me a message through here.
We just happened to make a visit to the Pacific Science Center today. Here's another picture of their Archimedes screw. It's capable of conveying a surprising amount of water (if you spin it fast, which Ellie can't).
