Project Development

 Hello and welcome back to my blog!! 


Today, I’ll be sharing with you the jounery that my team and I had went through during our project development😁



In this page, I will:

  1. Briefly describe my team chemical device

  2. Show how the team planned, allocated the tasks, and executed the project. 

  3. Document the entire design and build process of the chemical device and include videos, pictures, and screen captures of the processes.

  4. Include “Hero shot” of every milestone of the processes, example the part A that was 3D printed, part B that was laser-cut, electronics components moved/worked according to the program. Hero-shot is taken with the person-in-charge holding/working/making the parts.

  5. Include the name of the person who was in-charge of every part of the project. 

  6. Document my individual contribution to this project.

  7. Provide the link to the page of the blog of my teammates. 

  8. Describe problems encountered and how the team solved them.

  9. Include all the project design files as downloadable files. 

  10. Embed the final prototype design file, i.e., the final fusion360 design file showing the entire prototype.

  11. Type my Learning reflection on the overall project development.


Well, sit back and enjoy as I share more about my journey😊

  1. Our team Chemical Device


My team's chemical device is a Carbon Monoxide (CO) detection and removal system (DRS).
Now, you may be thinking about why did the team decide to choose this topic. Well, this is because the team saw an increase in the production of materials as well as parts. Some of these Manufacturing would be metals manufacturing, electricity supply, mining, and chemical manufacturing just to name a few.

CO is highly poisonous, colourless, odourless and tasteless gas. It is also able to mix well in air. This is highly concerning as CO would be rapidly absorbed by the body and would lead to headaches, dizziness and muscle weakness. In high concentrations of CO, it would lead to death.

However, in our case, it would be welding. In welding, CO is mostly formed at the Arc. There have also been cases where the workplace are not well-ventilated which has led to fatalities in the past.

Hence, this is the reason the team thought of designing a prototype that is able to detect CO as well as lower the concentration of CO from the environment that the workers are working in.

Links to resources used:




How it works:
When the device senses a high level of CO present, it would switch the fan on to allow the CO it leave the working environment and into the open air outside. This would lower the levels of CO present in the workshop when welding. It is used to as a precautionary backup in the case where by the vents or fumehoods are not working properly. 

There will also be an LED as an indicator to allow the workers in the workshop that there is a large concentration of CO present. 

The sketches of the product is below:





  1. Team Planning, allocation, and execution


Reinard - CEO
Clive- CSO
Adyl- COO
Joelle (me!)- CFO

This is how we split the workload:


Below is the finalized BOM (BILL OF MATERIALS) table. 



Below is the finalized Gantt chart (planned and actual) and the tasks allocation for each team member.


  1. Design and Build Process

In this section, I will provide documentation of the design and build process.

The entire design was based of Reinard's sketch, Link to his blog is here!

Part 1. Design and Build of the Base and gears are done by Clive

To see how the base and the gears were designed, feel free to go to Clive's blog!

Link to Clive's Blog

Part 2. Design and Build of Walls and motor housing is done by me!

Designing of walls:

First, I added in construction lines 1mm away from the edge of every corner as the acrylic only has a thickness of 3mm while the thickness of the slot on the base was 5mm. This left gave an allowance of 1mm on either side of the wall.


Then I drew a line across the whole base to have an easier time later to draw in the thickness of the wall which is 3mm.

I did this for all 4 length of the base.




The next thing I did was to to draw in the length and thickness of the walls using the rectangle tool and fixing the thickness to be 3mm. 


After drawing for all 4 sides, it looked like this:



Next i extrude the walls by pressing "E" and clicking on the areas that I want to extrude


I repeated the same steps for the other 3 walls, this is what I got at the end



Next was to add a hole for the fan to fit in. To do that, I selected the hole function

After that select the face where the hole should go
Then center the hole in the middle of the face of the body, since the fan blade has a diameter of 50mm, I made the radius of the hole 60mm to allow for clearance.


Next would be making another vent on the side wall. First I select the wall opposite from the fan hole wall.

Then I drew a rectangle that was 5mm by 3mm


Afterwards, I used the rectangle pattern tool to help me create more copies of the rectangles

Then I dragged the function horizontally and made 8 copies of it

Next I made 8 copies vertically, this made 64 copies of it

This is what the final sketch would look like

Then I pressed "E" to extrude and selected all 64 boxes
Then entered the value of -5mm to ensure that the holes are cut out using the "Cut" operation

After cutting the parts, it would look like this

The next step would be to ensure that the base of the walls has the notches so that the joinery would work. The would be done by using the "Combine" tool. Then select the wall as the target body while the base is the tool body. The operation would be "Cut". Most IMPORTANTLY ensure that the keep tools box is checked. This is to ensure that the base would still be there after cutting the wall. I repeated the steps for all the walls.




Next was to add tabs to the top of the 4 walls so that it can be secured by the top of the box.
First, create a sketch at the top of the wall
Then draw a Rectangle with dimensions of 6mm by 3mm

I repeat this step another 3 times

This is what I was left with in the end

Then press "E" to extrude it by 3.5mm. This was because Dr Noel recommended that there should be some excess.

Repeat this step for the other 3 walls. 
This is what it should look like afterward: 

Next to create the lid of the box, click create sketch, and select the x-axis. 

Then i created a square that has a base of 125mm by 125mm 

Then use the extrude function on the newly created base and change the start option to offset.


And with a bit of trial and error to rough gauge how high the offset has to be

I have found that with an offset of 130mm, it would fit the top of the 4 walls nicely.
Change the operation from "Cut" to "New Body" to create the lid

Extrude the body by 3mm as that is the thickness of the acrylic.

Then using the Combine tool, 

Select the lid as the target body and the walls as the tool body. Ensure that the operation is "cut" and keep tools box is checked. 
Repeat for the other 3 walls



 The top should now look like this

This is how the box looks like in real life


This is the video of the walls being laser cut 


Motor Housing

To create the housing, firstly we would have to create a sketch. And I created a construction line down the middle of the fan hole wall.
Then using the dimensions of the motor, I created a rectangle
Using the offset tool, I offset the lines so that I would be able to create a housing later on.
I entered the offset to be 2mm


Afterwards, I dragged the sketch to where I wanted the motor housing to be at

Then extrude the sketch to 20mm to make the housing

 
Since the motor is not a rectangle with 90 degrees edges, I used the fillet tool to make the overall look more sleek. 

I selected all 4 edges


Then applied a filet of 0.5mm 

This is how it looked like

Then I made a piece where the holder can be attached to. I extrude the part where it would fit into the "clip" 




Then extrude the length to the motor housing 



And combine both bodies together




This is how it looked like when it was printed out





Part 3. Coding of electronics done by Adyl

Link to Adyl's Blog

  • .

Part 4. Integration of all parts and electronics done by all


Here is how the final fusion 360 looked like



Here's a video on the explosion of the model😊




The next step was to combine all of our parts together. We started off with glueing the walls and lid together first and left it to dry overnight

 

Next would be to glue the motor housing to the wall


After everything has been glued in place, We then begin to fix the components in the box. 


Hero shot:




4.  Problems and Solutions




Problem 1:

When we wanted to print the box, it took nearly 2 days to print! We wanted to print the box in 1 piece to save the troubles of thinking how to connect all the pieces together. 

Solution: After discussing and much thought, the team decided to print the box wall by wall instead. 

Problem 2: 

This then lead to the next problem. This is becasue when we wanted to 3D print the walls, it took 2 hours to print 1 wall. This would mean that it would need 8 hours to print the walls and the top was going to be laser cut.

Solution: This then stumped the team as we had to change the material and we thought that it was going to be hard since the thickness of acrylic was not what we had in the design. The acrylic was 3mm while our design wasa 5mm. However, the team realised that it was not much of an issue and we tweaked our design to be able to be laser cut. 

Problem 3:

The team forget that there is a need to inclue a hole of the sensor and a hole for the power supply. 

Solution: 

We drilled a hole through the bottom base. 

Problem 4: 

When using a servo as the fan, it did not produce a smooth enough motion to act as a fan.

Solution: 
Looked back on past practicals and practices to see what can be changed to improve the code. 


Problem 5: 
The LED and servo could not run at the same time. 

Solution: 
After checking with Dr Noel, he told us to use a transistor, the team then looked at the arduino kit properly and did find the transistor. This allowed the team to use a motor instead of the servo we initially used. 

5. Project Design Files as Downloadable Files
Link to the drive


6. Below is My Learning Reflection on the Overall Project Development

Now that I have gone through everything, the main thing I have learnt from this was to not expect evereything to go well even though we have a solid idea. This is because when doing the CAD designs, Clive and I had faced alot of problems. 


This was the first draft of the box, However as mentioned in problem 1, it would have taken too long to print it. 

Initially the design had a "door" so that it would be easy to carry out maintance on it. We were then hit with the realisation that it would not be practical to print or laser cut a box that was 15cm by 15cm by 15cm. 

This then lead us to think of how we could perhaps use joinery to help us design a box that would take up lesser time and made the whole structure stable. This journey made Clive and I extremely tired as we had many assignments during this period and we were at a loss with the design. This made me feel very drained and unmotivated to come up with an idea. With this being said, the idea of slot and tab came into mind and we decided that that was the best option. 

This journey made me more aware that whatever I have learnt has not been forgotten as during prototyping, I found myself recalling alot of things that I have learnt during ICPD and CPDD practicals and tutorials. This is especially because I was tasked with the CAD part of this protoype.  In this prototyping, I tried many new things that I was not able to during ICPD like including joineries in my design which could work as I was not confident that it could work at all. 

Another thing I would like to reflect on is that I should not be afraid if something does not work. This is bacause I am still learning which means that I would not know what I do not know until I try out something. This would mean that it is okay to fail as it is part and parcel in learning. To me, without failing, how would I know that I am truly learning? When I fail, it is a reminder to me and let me learn from experience which is what I find teaches me how to carry out things properly the next time the best. 

I also learnt from the Egg Drop challenge in ICPD that we should not leave things to the last minute. After learning that the painful way, I took that experience and tried to rush all the printings as well as cuttings early. With that being said, I was able to solve many problems like thinking of multiple designs and still had enough time to print and cut again if needed. 

When doign this blog, I also noticed that I did not do many hero shots. This was because I wasn't used to taking a picture with the parts, instead I was used to taking a picture of the parts only. This was something that i can improve on in the future. Documentation is an important skill and if I do not improve/ work on it, it could lead to poor documenting skills. In the future, I will set reminders to take hero shots and more pictures so that I can document my process better. 

With that said, I would like to give credits to Valarie and Asraf  for teaching me how to use the laser cutter at T11C. 


And to end this blog, I am thankful for the supportive teammates through out this process and for everyone who helped me.

Thank you soo much!! It has been a wonderful adventure! Till next time!!



Comments

Post a Comment