Automatic Music Stand Page Turner

Prepared for:
Professor Ken Youssefi
ME130, Design of Planar Machinery
May 9, 2006

By Group 6:
Jee Gun Kim
Rex Lu
Robert Carlo Millan
Alvin Tai

ME 130: Design of Planar Machinery

Group 6

Spring 2006
Automatic Page Turner

Background
Professional and amateur alike, most musicians have experienced reading sheet
music that typically span several pages and are usually in some type of bound form.
Thus, in order for smooth transitions between pages, musicians need a method to
turn a page without interfering with their performance. This is usually done with the
help of a page-turning assistant. However, for most musicians an assistant may not
always be readily available. A mechanism mounted directly on the music stand that
turns the page at the push of a foot-operated button will render the assistant
unnecessary and obsolete.

Task Assignment
Group Member
Jee Gun Kim

Rex Lu

Robert Millan

Alvin Tai

Task

Initial design of mechanism

Mechanism synthesis
Acquire music stand
Kinematics analysis of design
Write written project
Work on poster
Draft design by hand
Acquire material for links
Attach motor to the mechanism
Machine the mechanism
Assemble the mechanism
Work on poster
Machine the mechanism
Acquire motor and wood
Cut plywood
Assemble the mechanism
Make the poster presentation
Initial design of mechanism
Create 2D drawings using AutoCAD
Create 3D drawings using SolidWorks
Acquire material used to lift page
Machine the mechanism
Write written project
Work on poster

List of Specifications/Requirements
The following is a list of specific design criteria that we tried to accomplish with our
mechanism. These specifications and requirements were created in the beginning of
the project and our conceptual designs were developed to achieve these goals.
For final product:
Non-distracting quiet and fast operation
High reliability, to prevent malfunction during performance

ME 130: Design of Planar Machinery

Group 6

Spring 2006
Automatic Page Turner

Compact design
Detachable from stand
Battery operated
One page turn per pedal depression

For this project:

Confirm functionality of design
Turn a page in a book of music notes
Turn several pages in succession
Not all final product functional requirements may be met

Conceptual Designs
The main concern with creating an automatic page-turner was the mechanical ability
to distinguish individual pages. Without any sort of electronic technology there were
only a limited number of ways to do this. Here are a couple of aspects that we
discussed during our brainstorming session (Appendix):

Vacuum suction
Magnetic attraction
Surface Roller
Surface Friction contact

Vacuum suction
The idea behind a vacuum suction is that it would effectively separate the top page
from the rest of the book. The disadvantage to this type of method is that it would
create unnecessary noise that would interrupt a musical performance. It would also
need to be incorporated into the 4-bar mechanism and integration would be difficult
to implement.
Magnetic Attraction
For this concept, we thought that we could attract individual pages off the bound
book and then create a turning device based on the magnetic attraction. The
advantage to this concept would be the ability to move pages without physical
contact with the page. However, this turned out to be a difficult quality to control as
it was still difficult for the magnet to distinguish between the pages. Another
disadvantage was the necessity to prep the music book with magnetic materials.
This was decided to be an impractical design.
Surface Roller
This was a concept based on many inkjet printers out on the market. With a rubber
roller, a printer can effectively remove a single sheet of paper. Even without a 4-bar
mechanism, this would work well. However, unlike a printer, our device cannot cover
a certain amount of space since allowing full visual contact with the sheet music is
crucial for a musician; a roller would block too much space on the book.
Surface Friction Contact
Our final conceptual design worked perfectly with the class requirements and the
necessary movement. The idea behind this was that we would have two main parts
of the mechanism. A rocker would lift a single page with a high-friction material
(much like rubberized finger turners) while the crank would sweep underneath the
lifted page for a complete page-turn. This acts similarly to the mechanism and

ME 130: Design of Planar Machinery

Group 6

Spring 2006
Automatic Page Turner

motion of a windshield wiper; on a car, one arm acts to collect the water and the
other arm sweeps the collected water off of the windshield. We developed two
designs for this concept: one that would work from the bottom and one that would
work form the top. We decided to design the former due to the limitations of the
musical stand that we were working on. It was easier to attach a mechanism at the
top rather than the bottom due to the protruding lip that the music book rests on.

Introduction
Our automatic page-turner uses a 4-bar mechanism as the foundation of the design.
To create a mechanism that would turn a single page in a music book requires first
distinguishing the pages within the book. The completed mechanism consists of two
main parts: a rocker that initially lifts a single page and a crank that finishes the
entire page turn. To lift a single page, the rocker has a substance called Paper Tak
which creates a high friction surface for effective page lifting. Because the majority
of musical instruments are played with the hands, we added a foot pedal that would
allow uninterrupted page transitions.

Detail Design
The mechanism is a Grashof crank-rocker designed using a two position synthesis of
a four-bar crank and rocker to give 68 degrees rocker rotation with equal time
forward and back, from a constant speed motor input. The 68 degrees came from
first, determining the horizontal distance between O2 and O4 as 7 inches, and then
trying to lower the position of O4 as much as possible. Figure XXX below shows the
extreme right position of the rocker arm.

ME 130: Design of Planar Machinery

Group 6

Spring 2006
Automatic Page Turner

Figure 1. Synthesis of the mechanism.

The velocity analysis was done at an arbitrary position of the mechanism using the
velocity polygon method. Since the angular velocity of link 2 was not available
during the time of the analysis, the other angular velocities and the velocities of the
joints were found in terms of the angular velocity of link 2.

ME 130: Design of Planar Machinery

Group 6

Spring 2006
Automatic Page Turner

Figure 2. Velocity analysis at an arbitrary position.

Drawings
Refer to appendix.

Bill of Materials
Item

Quantity

Manhasset Music
Stand
1/8 by 3/4 by 8
aluminum
3/8 Plywood, 10
by 10 square

4 by 4 by 10
wooden beam

Electric motor
2 diameter

1
1

1
1

Description of
Use
Stable base for
mechanism
Material for
linkages
Base for motor and
linkages, mounts to
stand
Material for offset
wedge and blocks
in pedal
Drives the crank
Link 2, connects to

Cost
$32.49
$30.99
$0.00

$0.00

$0.00
$0.00

ME 130: Design of Planar Machinery

Group 6

aluminum rod, 3
long
Paper Tack

3 door hinge
Battery Holder

1
1

AA batteries

Mini Breadboard
10 ohm Resistor

1
3

Compression
Springs

Spring 2006
Automatic Page Turner

motor shaft
Adhesive used to
pick up page
Hinge in foot pedal
Holds AA batteries
for easy wiring
Power for the
motor
Mount for resistors
Varies the speed of
the motor
Provides counter
force in pedal,
mount for paper
tack

Total

$4.00
$4.55
$0.00
$0.00
$0.00
$0.00
$0.00

$72.03

Discussion & Future Modifications

During the design phase of our mechanism, we encountered a couple problems that
ultimately led to our final design. The following is a summary of the problems and
solutions that were developed during the design of this device:

Offset plane: We noticed that with a crank and rocker operating on the
same plane as the music book created a problem. If the sweeping pageturning arm (crank) were to be on the same plane as the book, it would
eventually hit the book binding rather than sweep a single page. This also
proved to be a difficult problem to solve since we werent qualified to design
3-dimensional mechanisms. We finally decided to create an angled wedge
(Figure 3) that would offset the operational mechanical plane. This would
allow the rocker to maintain physical contact with the page while permitting
the crank to sweep individual pages.

Maintaining rocker contact: Because the mechanical plane is slightly offset,

we wanted to have the rocker to stay in contact with the page for as long as
possible. We initially designed a spring-loaded rocker that would force the
arm to maintain physical contact with the page for as long as possible.
However, this was unnecessary as we eventually developed a simplified
version that was just as effective, as seen in Figure 3.

Rocker

Spring Loaded

ME 130: Design of Planar Machinery

Group 6

Spring 2006
Automatic Page Turner

Page contact force

(a)
(b)
Figure 3. (a) Initial design for rocker (b) Final design.

Creating Frictional Contact: The initial design called for a simple eraser to
create a high-friction surface to lift single pages off of the music book. After
several tests with an ordinary notebook, we believed that this would be
sufficient. However, when we finally acquired the actual music book that we
were going to use, we noticed that there was a flaw in our design. A music
book has very different physical qualities compared to a normal notebook.
The music book has thicker and smoother pages which increases the force
needed to separate pages. We began to research different chemical adhesives
that would allow continuous reuse without affecting the frictional coefficient
that we needed; some technologies that we looked into included Post-It Notes
and masking tapes. We finally found a substance called Paper- Tak that is
used to hang/hold delicate pictures without damaging the photos. These were
reusable and maintained a high-friction surface for our design.

Motor Speed: Our final problem arose with our electric motor that we used
drive the crank. We overestimated the speed of our initial motor and the
mechanism failed to lift the page. This occurred because with a higher speed,
the adhesive (Paper-Tak) wasnt able to grab the page from the music book.
The kinetic friction was too small to pick up the page, and the speed of the
motor didnt allow us to operate in the static friction region. This was an
unforeseen problem and the design had to be modified with a lower RPM
motor that could provide more torque.

Future Modifications
There are two aspects of our current design that can be modified in the future to
increase the effectiveness of the automatic page-turner. It would be beneficial to find
a solution to minimize the noise created by the mechanism since it will probably be
used during musical performances. This can probably be achieved with a more
expensive motor and insulation around the linkages. We do not have the resources
to obtain another motor so it was difficult to change this aspect of our design. The
linkages also produce noise as they collide with each other during the mechanical
movement. This can be minimized by using insulation to prevent contact between
the bars.
Another important aspect of the design is the aesthetics of the device. The design
should not be visually disturbing or distracting since it will be mounted on a musical
stand. A musician must focus on the composition rather than the sudden movement
of this device. In the future, we want this device to become part of the music stand
rather than an accessory. With the right aesthetic design, we can create a less
distracting method of turning pages.

ME 130: Design of Planar Machinery

Group 6

Spring 2006
Automatic Page Turner

References
Design of Machinery: An Introduction To The Synthesis and Analysis of
Mechanisms and Machines. Third Edition New York: McGraw Hill. 2004.
Norton, R.

Youssefi, K. ME130: Design of Planar Machinery Notes. www.me.berkeley.edu/ME130.

Retrieved from the World Wide Web on May 08, 2006.

ME 130: Design of Planar Machinery

Group 6

Spring 2006
Automatic Page Turner

Appendix
Hand sketches and conceptual designs

ME 130: Design of Planar Machinery

Group 6

Spring 2006
Automatic Page Turner

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ME 130: Design of Planar Machinery

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Automatic Page Turner

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ME 130: Design of Planar Machinery

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Automatic Page Turner

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