Project Development

Welcome to my blog! Today I will be sharing my experience with my project development.

Our team Chemical Device

In this section, I will briefly describe my team’s chemical device. My team’s chemical device is a tea maker. The objective of our product is to make a tea maker that gives the user their freedom to make their tea however they like with ease. With our chemical device, the tea maker, we can make tea lovers enjoy making tea and also even experiment with other tea leaves in different temperatures and steeping time.

There are so many different types of flavours of tea. Such as the oolong team, green tea and English breakfast. These tea can be categorized into white tea, green tea, oolong tea and black tea. English breakfast is a kind of black tea. Some examples of white tea are white peony and silver needle.

But did you know, all true flavours of tea actually come from the same tea leaf?  These silver needle, English breakfast and green tea come from the plant called camellia sinensis. What makes the difference in flavour is the way the tea leaves are treated after harvesting. I also read somewhere that the season the leaves are picked is also a factor of the tea flavour.

Our device is a tea maker, and it can detect temperature and volume of the water inside of the kettle. When the kettle is put on a platform, the LCD screen will show the weight of the kettle. There is also a temperature probe that will be placed inside the kettle to measure the temperature of the water in the kettle. The LCD will show:

Temperature: 30.00 ̊C

 Volume = 0.00L

The tea maker also has a function that when there is too much water, the Arduino will start beeping. People like to be on their phones 24/7 that they sometimes aren’t aware of their own surroundings. Therefore, this is to alert users that the kettle is on the high level.

Furthermore, there is also a mechanism that will lift the sieve of the kettle as the sieve may be hot. Therefore, the user does not have to touch the sieve before being able to pour out their drink.

Below is the hand sketch of the chemical device:

Team planning, allocation, and execution

Moving on to team roles, there are 4 roles: the CEO, CSO, COO and CFO.

Kerri Long is the CEO, Darel Suen is the CSO, Dylan Low is the CFO and Kelvin Ang is the COO.

I will show the finalized BOM (Bill of Materials):

I will show the gantt chart and the allocation of members:

 

Design and build process

Part 1. Design and Build of Part Tea Maker. (load cell base) (done by: ME)

I was in charge of designing the design in fusion 360 as well as printing it. Both 3D printing and laser cutting. This is the link for the fusion 360 designs:

I have designed more parts. However, due to time constraints, we decided to only 3D print and laser cut a few pieces. Designed like 10 pieces to laser cut, but when I went to laser cut the pieces, it did not turn out as I expected. Therefore, we decided to improvise with using carboard instead. This made the prototype be made of 3D printed materials, acrylic pieces from laser cutting and cardboard.

The picture above is the overall design of the bottom part of the load cell. I will show with you how I have designed this model:

1.     I first drew up the sketch by clicking on create sketch button on the top left-hand corner that I have circled.

2.     After clicking the “create sketch”, use the tools on the top left-hand corner that I have circle to draw the basic shape of the model.

3.     After drawing the basic shapes, click on the “final sketch” button on the top right-hand corner. It is very visible from the pic above.

 

4.     Right click on the sketch and click “extrude”.

 

 

5.     After clicking extrude, you will see a text box that will pop up. You can indicate any number in the text box. For example, I typed in 5mm, therefore, it will extrude by 5mm. key in -5mm, and it will extrude the other way.

That is how I did my fusion 360 model. Other than this piece, I also have designed many others in fusion 360.

Part 2: Design and Build of Part Tea Maker. (load cell plate ) (done by: ME)

This is the one side of the platform:

 

 

This is the other side of the platform:

I will show yall how to design this in fusion 360:

Similar to the previous steps, click on “create sketch”. I forgot to say that after creating sketch, there will appear three orange squares. Usually, we would click on the bottom square. Using the tools: line, rectangle and circle, draw the basic shape of the model.

Refer to the previous part about making the shapes. And also take note that you may use construction lines for more precise measurements. I used construction lines while making this model.

Do you see the orange dotted line? That is the construction line. I need the rectangle to be exactly in the middle. Using construction lines will help me determine the centre of the circle. I also need the circles to be the symmetrical. The length from the edge of the rectangle to the side of the circle should be the same on each side. Using construction lines will also help me determine the midpoint of a line and I used that to find the centre of the circle and to determine where to place the smaller circles.

There is also a method of stating the parameters. 

This is my hero shot with my 3D printed materials and laser cut acrylic. I did not cut out the cardboard. The cardboard was already made before I did my hero shot. But in the middle you will see a black circle. That is 3D printed. The load cell bottom is inside so ya not able to see it. There are more laser cut pieces laid out in front of the prototype. Those I designed at cut. However, we are not able to use it as the dimensions were not correct. It was supposed to be way smaller.

Part 2.5 Laser cutting (done by me) 

These were what I wanted to laser cut. But they all turned out wrong. This is because I imported everything in the same file. The correct standard of procedure is to make each component in one file and import in the corelDraw one by one. However, due to time constraints we decided to only use two of the laser cut pieces and the rest will be substituted with cardboard.

Part 3. Desing and build of load cell (done by Dylan and Darel)

The part where the use of the 3D printed load cell base and 3D printed load cell plate is used with the load cell is made by dylan and darel. They put all three pieces together. You can look at their blog here:

dylan blog: https://dylanl21.wixsite.com/cp5070-2022-2b02-gro

darel: https://darelsuen.wixsite.com/cp5070-2022-2b02-gro

Part 3. Design and build of stand ( done by me and Kerri)

We made use of the non used acrylic from laser cutting to make the stand. 

This is the CAD drawing of the stand. I forgot take picture of the in real life stand. The blue pieces are acrylic and the brown pieces are cardboard. I am glad that the non used acrylic was put to good use or else I laser cut them for nothing. The stand is meant for the mechanism where we would lift the sieve up. We cut the cardboard and hot glue the acrylic together. 

More can be seen on Kerri's blog: 

https://cp5070-2022-2b02-group2-kerri.blogspot.com/

 

Part 4. Programming of motor and lcd (done by Dylan and Kelvin)

dylan and kelvin were tasked with the arduino programming. only geniuses can do arduino programming. More can be seen on their blog: 

kelvin blog: https://cp5070-2022-2b02-group2-kelvinang.blogspot.com/

 dylan blog: https://dylanl21.wixsite.com/cp5070-2022-2b02-gro

Part 5. Integration of all parts and electronics (done by Darel )

darel put all the rest of the pieces together. More can be seen on his blog: 

darel's blog: https://darelsuen.wixsite.com/cp5070-2022-2b02-gro

 

4. Problems and Solution

In this section I will describe the problems encountered in the design and build process and how the team solved them.

-       3D printing takes such a long time. Need to do the hassle of coming to Workshop 3 early as well as go through the booking system through fablab which is forever fully booked. We overcome this problem by decreasing the number of parts that needs to be 3D printed.

-       The laser cut piece were not used because the dimensions were not right. One file should have one body. And import each file one by one in corelDraw. We wanted to laser cut again but due to time constraints, we decided to substitute the laser cut pieces with cardboard. As laser cutting requires time to book and sometimes, there were not any available slots.

-       The 3D printers at W3 are always not working.

we wanted to 3D print the LCD casing. however, the print failed. we decided to push back the printing of the lcd casing as it is not important. however, due to time constraints, we ended up not even 3D printing the LCD casing. We cannot print very big pieces as it will take a long time and also need to give chance for others to use. 

5. project design files as downloadable files 

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/123vGcesjHLjBKAKqClPbd-ObtSuYdQlP?usp=share_link

6. below is my learning reflection on the overall project development.

My learning reflection on the overall project development is that I managed to learn and sharpen my skills in using fusion 360 to design the bodies required in our prototype. I am glad that I can help my group in designing the components in fusion 360 and as well as design the laser cut components. Besides me designing fusion 360, I also went to actually 3D print and laser cut the design. As a result, I became better at setting up the 3D printer and am more familiar with the steps on how to use the laser cutter. When I went to laser cut, kerri and hui yi (another grp) was also with me to help me with the laser cutting steps. They guided me through and helped me get my laser cutting pieces. The teachers at the fablab and makerspace was also very nice and whenever we needed help with the laser cutter, they would come and help us right away. The TE’s at W3 also always helped us whenever there was a problem with the 3D printers. The creality ender 3 printers were always jammed and the print always doesn’t turn out nice. So in the end, there were only the ultimaker 3D printers available. When I was 3D printing, Dr Noel was also there in W3. I asked Dr Noel for help when I couldn’t save the file in the correct format. It was a tough journey as we also had to juggle with tests and other projects. Other than CPDD project development, there was also CEDC, POS and SIP to focus on. This made me realize how time management is very important and that I should have better time management. It was really difficult to manage my time. I always right “I should manage my time better” in all my reflection but I still don’t manage my time better cause its that difficult for me. I am glad that the prototype works. There was also a lot of time constraints doing the project. That we also used carboard to make the prototype. 

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