Applications and Implications

What will it do?

I have this concern about conserving the resources and using them judiciously. I also prefer to keep my work space neat and clean. I am making a fluid dispensing machine that dispenses the fluid required for moulding and casting week. With this machine the only the required amount of fluid will be dispensed and the workspace will remain clean.

Who's done what beforehand?

In in Fab archive i could find some cocktail making machine that mixes several softdrinks to make a cocktail. It uses peristaltic pump to pump the fluids. This project of mine can be called similar but the mechanism of working is different.

What will you design?

This project involves both mechanical and electronic design. The mechanical 3D design part includes the body of the machine, the case for holding the solenoid valve and railing, nozzle for dispensing the fluid. In the electronic design I have to design a board to control the motor, the LCD display, the load cell and the solenoid valve. Also as the project proceeds I'll find ways to incorporate bluetooth module for communicating with the machine.

What material and components will be used? || Where will it come from? || How much will they cost?

I intend to include the materials available in the lab the most to finish this project. Also there are lot of recyclabed material available in the lab. Certain components are bought from the local market.

What parts and systems will be made?

The body of the machine, the load sensor base, reducer for the solenoid valve, acryilic rings that function as bearing for the solid rod for translation of the nozzles will be made entirely by me. Then the systems made the electronicboards used for controlling the motor, solenoid valve, load sensor and LCD display.

What processes will be used?

What questions need to be answered?

I intially made a nozzle with 3mm diameter. I could find that the liquid did not flow through it as expected. The flow rate was very low and it took a lot of time to dispense the required amount. So I made the opening big by drilling a hole. Now the diameter was 5 mm and the liquid was flowing down easily. SO i designed a reducer with 5mm opening.

With careful evaluation I came to the conclusion that it was easy to move the valves side to side than to move the whole bottle. The mechanism involved for the moving of the valves was much simpler than moving the bottles.

How will it be evaluated?

Schedule of tasks

Since the availablitiy of materials and machine in the lab varied frequently the Schedule was made on the basis of what tasks to complete first.

The Development time

It took about two weeks to build the machine completely. The most time consuming being the circuit designing, routing and soldering. The lack of the right milling bit to mill traces for Atmega 328 was quite a challenge. This also meant that the soldering needed to be extremely precise as the traces were very delicate. It took almost 3 days to completely get the board in perfect condition.

The 3D printing as it turns out took about 24 hours combined. That fact that not all 3D printed models is a success can hinder your progress. I learned that the 3D prints should be done as early as possible because other students also wanted to use the machine and get their prints intact which usually happens but at time the prints could be a disaster.

CNC milling took about 2 hours with all the machine setting and job setting time included. It took about an hour to completely paint the milled parts and took another 24 hours to dry out the paint.

All operations that involved the laser cutting machine including the designing part took about an hour to finish.

Another big challenge was calibrating the load cell which was not very easy. I had bad luck of working with faulty jumper wires and load cell amplifier. It took me two days to completely fix the load cell.

Meanwhile documenting everything was challenging. Taking all the pictures and videos, editing thing on time and uploading everything was a time comsuming process. Though I couldn't keep track of the exact time it took for all these but I should say it should be nothing less than 20 hrs.

Time Management

One of the key lessons I learnt was that it is very important to keep documenting everything simultaneously because it really saves a lot of time. I managed to do this by doing it whenever I was tired.

I made use of the free times I could find especially during the time for curing the paint to edit the photos and videos I had taken.

We had planned our turns of using the machines so that nobody had to wait. For example when one was busy with the 3D printing others would be focused on designing or milling. This requires some understanding between the team members. Fortunately for our team everything worked well and good.

Making a list of the purchases you need to make is also a good measure to save time.