Monday, October 28, 2013

Engineering Speaker: From Mathematics to Medical Device Design

Sarah Reed came to speak to us last week about her experience in the design field. She studied Mathematics as an undergraduate, and later developed an interest in industrial design. Because her undergraduate experience had been more mathematically rather than artistically focused, Sarah attended graduate school for mechanical engineering. She was able to do many of the things that industrial designers do, but through a engineer's lense. I am particularly interested in industrial design because you are design something to be useful for others. It was amazing to see the different products that she had helped to produce. As an architecture major, I would love to be on the more artistic side of product design. However, as architects or designers there is sometimes a disconnect between practical use and esthetic. It was interesting to hear her talk us through the process of how they came up with their leg compression product, and the different ways in which they collect data for the project.  

(Draft 1) 

Testing: Final Model of Charcoal Stove

For the testing round of this project we used charcoal fuel, and placed 32 fl.oz. of water in a pan on top of the cookstove. We compared each stove based on its ability to heat/boil water over the course of time.

Structurally our stove was successful. It did not bend with the head of the charcoal, or collapse under the pressure of the water and pan. The chimney worked as we wanted it too, sucking the smoke up and away through the long spout. Although the chimney was perfect for people working on the ground, it was a little short for those who were standing. It release the smoke directly at eye level. Another one of the issues we had with our stove was the fact that it did not provide enough oxygen into the fuel chamber. Although we had cut out a large opening on the bottom of the stove, it was not enough. We began by taking the temperature of the water prior to heating, and then measured it at 6-10 minute intervals. The temperature began at 25.5 degrees celsius, and seemed to climb steadily; however once the kindling flame went out, the burning process slowed down, plateaued, and eventually just went back down. (See Graph Below)

It seems that because of the lack of oxygen the stove was not able to perform as strongly as we had wanted it to. We also took the fuel tray out of the stove while we were explaining our project, and that seems to have had an affect on the temperature of the water as well. 

(Part 2) Charcoal Stove: Final Sheet Metal Test Model


Chimney Construction Process Photos: 

Taping the tube of sheet metal together
in order to keep everything in place
The bracketed tube! 











Bracketing the chimney 
The Final Product :              

Pulling out the fuel 



Putting on the chimney









  
The side of the cookstove, after we
successfully bracketed it together!
The Final Model of of the Stove

*Because of formatting issues I needed to separate the two posts. 

Monday, October 21, 2013

Charcoal Stove: Final Sheet Metal Test Model

ASSEMBLING THE FINAL MODEL! 

(Figure 1- Measuring and cutting)
Our final model was in many ways similar to our initial cardboard sketch model. We were able to carry over almost all of the design concepts that we initially laid out, such as the interior door that divided the fuel compartment into two section, as well as the fuel drawer; however we did make some alterations to the construction and assembly of the stove. The material was far more difficult to work with than the cardboard. It was extremely sharp and difficult to cut, form and bend. (I was wounded during the process of building the stove- BATTLE SCARS! See Figure 2 and 3) Such changes in the material pushed us to make some alterations. We tried to simplify the construction as much as possible; limiting the number of pieces used, and creating single piece construction when we could. For the base rectangular frame of the cooktop, we used a single piece of sheet metal. From the single sheet we bent it into a four sided rectangular tube. We cut the doors and the feet from the single sheet of metal. We also cut an opening on the bottom of the rectangular tube- the opening was just under where the fuel would sit - thus allowing oxygen to enter the compartment directly. On the edges of the tube, we left room to create small flaps that would allow us to bracket the side pieces onto the tube. 
(Figure 2 - Battle Wounds!)
(Figure 3 - Battle Wounds Up Close) 
The process of bracketing the metal together was also far more difficult than we had initially thought. We had difficulty making the holes in the metal the right size. The drill would often cause the metal to pop back up with it, making the holes bigger. We ran into great difficulty bracketing the sides of the stove to the main body because 1.) the metal was very flexible and bend under the pressure of the drill, 2.) the overlap of material was really small, and difficult to control. We found that instead of using the fixed drill, the hand held drill was far easier to maneuver. The hand held drill allowed for far greater control and flexibility. Katie was thus able to drill the hole while I held up the metal by placing my hand on the inside of the stove through what would later become the air vents under the fuel drawer. 
Figure 4- The finished base of the stove-
With the fuel cutouts and legs.
(Figure 5- Cutting out
what will the feet on the stove) 
One of the most difficult tasks was the construction of the chimney. Luisa developed a multi-piece chimney; however we later decided to simplify the chimney into a single tube. Using a long sheet of metal, we rolled it, and bracketed it. We wanted to metal to far enough away from those using the cook stove which would be close to the ground. (When we rolled up the material into its tubular form, we found it rather difficult to control the size of the bracket holes, and needed to resort to using bolts and screws that would fit the larger holes.) After making the tubular form, we made an angular cut at the base of the chimney. We made a simple cut up the chimney about 4 inches, and then bent the material back. We cut a hole in the back of the stove, and place the chimney over the whole. The bent wings on the chimney were used to bracket the chimney to the back side of the stove. 

Below are more pictures: 

Drawer Construction: 
The fuel drawer is almost built! 

Katie with the single sheet cutout that would later
become the fuel drawer! 


















The completed fuel drawer with Charcoal in it!
TESTING DAY! 





















Chimney Construction Process Photos: 

Taping the tube of sheet metal together
in order to keep everything in place
The bracketed tube! 











Bracketing the chimney 
The Final Product :              

Pulling out the fuel 



Putting on the chimney










The side of the cookstove, after we
successfully bracketed it together!
The Final Model of of the Stove 

Thursday, October 10, 2013

Charcoal Stove: Step 2- The Cardboard Sketch Model

We pulled together the different ideas from our rapid sketches. We wanted our stove to have the following features: 
  • A chimney or a way of reducing or redirecting smoke 
  • Bottom fueling would likely be easiest- and most efficient 
  • A multi-temperature cooktop / the ability to cook with low/high heat 
  • An extended cook top surface that would allow you to cook many things at once 
  • A simple design- with the fewest pieces possible- avoid breakage 
Below is our first cardboard draft design: 

 
Image 1: Luisa attaching to the chimney to the rear of the box- we are still deciding where the chimney feature will go. 
Image 2: The drawer space with the grate on which the drawer will sit. The grate will allow oxygen into the compartment.  
Image 3: The drawer space with the door open. The heat controlling wall is located just to the left of the door. 
Image 4: The drawer space with the door open and the drawer extended out. The heat controlling wall is located just to the left of the door. 
We developed one of our simplest designs, a single rectangular box. There is a fuel on one of the longer rectangular surfaces. The door is slightly shifted to the right. Inside, there is a small drawer where you would place the fuel. The fuel sits over some grates which serve as air vents, providing the flame with the appropriate levels of oxygen. Just next to the door where you insert the fuel is a small wall partition insert that slides in and out. The wall's purpose is to control heat flow. When the wall is open the heat reaches the surface evenly, allowing you to cook at high heat on both sides of the stove, but if you need a lower heat cook surface, you can slide the wall in, making the other side cooler. We need to determine just how the closing over of the wall will affect the temperature of the cooktop. We have yet to test it to see. We also need to think about the materials that might work well to help vary the temperature of these surfaces. We are hoping to find a way to make the box out of the fewest pieces possible; perhaps even finding a ways to fabricate the exterior out of a single piece of metal instead of piecing six pieces together. Perhaps this way we can reduce the possibility that pieces become loose or breakdown with time. 

Charcoal Stove: Step 1 - The Design Process

For our final project we have been asked to design a better charcoal burning stove. Our first step in the design process was a speed round of sketching. We each drew multiple quick sketches, each of us introducing or highlighting features we thought might be important. 


Sketch 1: A bottom fueling, raised, square form with chimney. Single temperature.  






Sketch 2: A bottom fueling, raised, square form tapering top. Single temperature. Grates inside of tapering top. Handle attached- for easier transport.   





Sketch 3: A bottom fueling, rectangular form . Dual temperature- side sectioned heating.  

Sketch 4: A bottom fueling, raised, square form with a side chimney. Dual temperature created by layered heating concept. High heat on bottom with access through tray. Low heat on top with open cook top area. 

Sketch 5: A bottom fueling, raised, square or circular form. A metal base with a ceramic cooktop pot concept. Single temperature.  









Sketch 6: A bottom fueling, raised form with disconnected extractor. Grate over open flame. No chimney. Single temperature.  
Sketch 7:  A multi-layer/multi-fuel tray stove. Not cooking over open flame. An oven style stove.  
Sketch 8: Fuel in center of stove. Small trays on either side of the fuel creating a 'heating space' or small oven. Top layer cook stove. Fuel moves upward to heat the cooktop. 
Sketch 9: Simple rectangular form with high heat low heat variation. Fuel inserted into the central area or off to the side allowing for cooktop temperature variation 

Wednesday, October 2, 2013

Personal Energy Consumption Estimate

Over the course of the last three days I have recorded my personal daily energy consumption. As I mentioned in the earlier post, my record of consumption was based off of the objects I have control over. Below are my findings:

MONDAY:

Electronics Wattage Time Consumption
iPhone 5 Watt 10 Hrs  50 Wh
MacBook 60 Watt 6 Hrs  360 Wh
Speakers/Radio 50 Watt 4 Hrs  200 Wh
Light 1 60 Watt 8 Hrs  480 Wh
Light 2  40 Watt 8 Hrs  320 Wh
TV 300 Watt 0 Hrs 
Hair Dryer  1875 Watt 3 min 93.75 Wh
Fan 200 Watt 12 Hrs  2400 Wh
Printer  75 Watt 10 min 12.5 Wh

Electronics Wattage Time Consumption
iPhone 5 Watt 8 Hrs  40 Wh
MacBook 60 Watt 4 Hrs  240 Wh
Speakers/Radio 50 Watt 0 Hrs 
Light 1 60 Watt 3 Hrs  180 Wh
Light 2  40 Watt 3 Hrs  120 Wh
TV 300 Watt 30 min 9000 Wh
Hair Dryer  1875 Watt 3 min 93.75 Wh
Fan 200 Watt 10 Hrs  2000 Wh
Printer  75 Watt 0 Hrs 

Electronics Wattage Time Consumption
iPhone 5 Watt 14 Hrs  70 Wh
MacBook 60 Watt 7 Hrs  420 Wh
Speakers/Radio 50 Watt 3 Hrs  150 Wh
Light 1 60 Watt 6 Hrs  360 Wh
Light 2  40 Watt 6 Hrs  240 Wh
TV 300 Watt 0 Hrs 
Hair Dryer  1875 Watt 3 min 93.75 Wh
Fan 200 Watt 12 Hrs  2400 Wh
Printer  75 Watt 0 Hrs 
  
Over the course of the week, I recorded the different times I used the particular electronics. I realized that I do not use all the objects everyday. For those objects I do use everyday, their usage varied. The objects I used the least were the TV and Printer. Objects I used the most were my fan and my cell phone. Phone usage was marked by battery life; how long it lasted that day, not how long I was physically on my phone each day. The life of the battery varied greatly depending on use per day. On Tuesday afternoon I called home, and that drastically cut the life of my phone battery. Today I barely touched my phone. I really only looked at it to check the time or quickly answer text messages. Computer life and usage varied as well. Today, my computer usage is much higher, because this is one of the only courses for which I need to use the computer at the moment. My other courses are more reading based, and readings come from books or printed handouts. The energy consumption of the lights in my room, is dependent on my presence in the room. I turn the lights on when I wake up in the morning, and again when I get back to my room at night. The fan in my room is probably one of the most frequently used objects in my room. I turn it on when I arrive back in my room, and I leave it on while I sleep. This exercise made me more aware of the objects in my room that I use. It was also interesting to determine how much power each of these objects use. I was actually pretty surprised to learn just how much power a fan uses. I was also surprised to find (this is assuming this is correct) that my computer uses only about 60W/hour, while the color tv uses around 300W. I wonder how much power consumption varies depending on the different tasks each object must fulfill. For example, if you are watching a movie on your computer does the power consumption vary, and is this what causes the battery to die sooner? 

Estimation of Energy Usage:

We were asked to estimate the power required for the typical objects in our everyday lives. For this exercise I concentrated on the objects whose power usage I could control, say the lamp in my room or my computer etc. I did not take into account refrigerator in the dining hall, or other powered objects whose power consumption I could not control. As I tried to figure out where to start, I realized that all of the electronics I use in my day to day life, have the Watts level marked on them. To the right is an example of my Macbook charger with the 60W clearly marked. I then collected the wattage level on all of the objects in my room:

Electronics Wattage
iPhone 5 Watt
MacBook 60 Watt
Speakers/Radio 50 Watt
Light 1 60 Watt
Light 2  40 Watt
TV 300 Watt
Hair Dryer  1875 Watt
Fan 200 Watt
Printer  75 Watt


I then estimated how much time I spend each day using these particular electronics:

Electronics Estimated Time Used 
iPhone 14 Hrs 
MacBook 7 Hrs 
Speakers/Radio 1 Hrs 
Light 1 6 Hrs 
Light 2  6 Hrs 
TV 0 Hrs 
Hair Dryer  3 min
Fan 8 Hrs 
Printer  10 min
In order to determine Energy Consumption I multiplied the Wattage of each object by the number of hours per day I used the particular object: 

Energy Consumption = Watts * Hrs/Day 

Based off of my rough estimate of how much I use each of these items per day - I determined the below estimate of consumption for each object:




Electronics Wattage Estimated Time Used  Estimated Consumption
iPhone 5 Watt 14 Hrs  70 Wh
MacBook 60 Watt 7 Hrs  420 Wh
Speakers/Radio 50 Watt 1 Hrs  50 Wh
Light 1 60 Watt 6 Hrs  360 Wh
Light 2  40 Watt 6 Hrs  240 Wh
TV 300 Watt 0 Hrs 
Hair Dryer  1875 Watt 3 min 93.75 Wh
Fan 200 Watt 8 Hrs  1600 Wh
Printer  75 Watt 10 min 12.5 Wh

My total estimate of consumption is 2848.25 Wh

* I am sorry I  did not realize I needed to post this on 9/30*