New Project, Second Blog

My final project this semester is to build a bike stand that allows a bike's rear wheel to rotate and spin a blender designed for this purpose.

I'm working in a group with Debbie and Alex, and we even made a new group blog! Come check us out!

We're working with a community youth group in Nicaragua who use their bike-blender to blend smoothies at local soccer games to fundraise for their group. The bike stand they're currently using permanently attaches to the bike and doesn't allow for them to quickly change their bike from stationary to mobile. We're trying to design a stand that is: 

-lightweight 

-easily adjustable to accommodate for different bike designs/widths/heights

-able to be put under the bike by one person

-foldable/transportable

-able to be made with local Nicaraguan materials

-several other things that you'll need to read about in the blog!

If you like bikes, engineering, and lots of brainstorming/prototyping, you'll really love the new blog, appropriately titled Bike Stand Final Project. Final project documentation is due December 9, so until then check in twice weekly (Mondays and Thursdays) to see what we're up to. I guarantee it will be awesome.

Bike Stand Final Project blog.

(Mostly written by me.)

"From Mathematics to Medical Device Design" Lecture

On Wednesday, October 23, from 12:30-1:45, the Engineering Department hosted a talk by Sarah Reed, Associate Program Manager of Farm Design, Inc. I could not attend, but here is the schedule of upcoming seminars if you'd like to prepare for future events.

Sarah Reed has undergraduate degrees in Math, Education, and Geology from University of Colorado at Boulder, and attended City College of San Francisco for Mechanical Engineering in 2006. In 2010 she received her Master's from MIT in Mechanical Engineering and Sustainable Product Design, where she researched as a D'Arbelloff Fellowship Recipient to complete her thesis: "A Study of the Manufacturing and Product Possibilities of Polylactic Acid/Cork Compound." Reed also studied alternative wind turbine blade materials. Reed's research work has contributed to other projects within MIT.

Reed is currently Associate Program Manager at Farm Design, Inc., which provides "complete development services for medical, life sciences, and consumer health companies." Farm specializes "in discovering product opportunities, solving complex problems, and creating intellectual property to expand and protect [their] client's value in the market."

The next lecture will be held on Friday, November 15, from 4-5:30pm in SCI 278. Anita Shukla, Professor of Engineering at Brown University, will be giving a talk titled "Designer Biomaterial Surfaces."

Abstract:

Research in biomaterials is continuing to lead advances in treatments for a variety of critical medical conditions. Dr. Shukla will discuss her research on developing drug delivery coatings that are aimed at treating aspects of traumatic injury including infection. She will also describe her research on designing biomimetic micropatterned surfaces to direct stem cell behavior. In addition, Dr. Shukla will discuss her career path and how she transitioned from studying chemical engineering as an undergraduate and graduate student to becoming a professor focused on biomedical engineering research.

Stove #4: Testing

Fantastic news: our stove did not explode, implode, or inflict injury on anyone or anything!

That being said, it did not heat things up too well.

Assignment: heat up 1000mL of water with 200g of charcoal (from Trader Joe's) (I'm open to product placement deals).

We measured the water temperature in intervals of between three and ten minutes.
Note: Several times during the heating process we removed the charcoal drawer to either check the charcoal or demonstrate our stove. We think this fact might have added to the overall cooling.

Victories:

1. Our chimney worked! We consistently felt heat and saw smoke exiting from the top of the chimney, away from our faces.

2. The stove did not collapse in on itself.

3. The charcoal drawer was plenty big and had space to accommodate much more fuel.

4. Although the stove tilted back an inch or two in the wind, it stayed up and seemed sturdy.

Room for improvement:

1. The drawer had trouble going in all the way and we had to finagle it in, which wasn't easy, since the drawer was super hot. On a second version, we would a) put the door on a hinge, and b) put tracks on the bottom of the stove to guide the drawer in.

2. Both the heat partition and the drawer got too hot to handle, and we had to use gloves. Ideally, we would be able to handle both with bare hands. On a second version, we would use a different, heat-resistant material.

3. The top started to cave in just a tad. Although the heat partition, when it was pushed in, gave the middle of the box support, we ideally would want more structural support in a second version.

4. Some smoke came out the door instead of the desired chimney exit. We could fix this by having a handle attached to the door, not cut out of it.

5. The charcoal didn't have enough air circulation. The stove was too low to the ground to get air up and through the stove. Ideally, we would want the stove on higher legs.

6. The top of the stove was too far away from the charcoal heat to boil the water. On a second version we would make the stove shorter.

Isabella testing the water temperature.

Our fuel drawer with 200g of charcoal and our fire starters.

We were surprised by the discoloration of the sheet metal when the fire started, but apparently that's normal.

In the background of the picture you can see my shoes.

The top of our stove.

You can see the fire through the door- in our next (hypothetical) model we would have a door without holes/windows.

If you're interested in buying this or another stove of a similar quality, please personally deliver cash or check for $390,023 next time you see me (Katie Tingle). Proceeds will be split evenly among me and my partners. We're also available for custom jewelry production (primarily out of sheet metal and Velcro) and the occasional babysitting job.

Stove #3: Final Design

After our cardboard model, we buckled down and measured, cut, folded, riveted, taped, and screwed. The five of us never worked together at one time outside of class. We worked in shifts, mostly coming in two or three at a time. This method led to some confusion, and some re-doing of previous work.




After about 30 combined hours of labor, this glorious beast emerged.




Troubles:
~We had some difficulty riveting the two sides of the aluminium sheet together to make the chimney pipe. Using the machine drill we always got a hole that was too big for rivets. We realized that if we put several layers of tape over the area we wanted drilled, and we made sure the two pieces of metal were super close, we got a nice drill. For the holes that were already too big, we used screws to fasten tightly.

~Chimney: Our original (cardboard) design was bits of triangular prisms connected by tape. Our first metal design was more of a jointed elbow, which didn't stand up and allowed smoke to escape from its joints. Our final design was a simple pipe extending straight up. We might have some smoke leaks around the seal, but we can address that problem in later versions of the stove.

~Riveting: We planned to rivet the sides of the boxes together using the flaps we allotted for that purpose, but at first it was too hard to drill holes, so we used aluminum tape to secure EVERYTHING. When we started using the hand drill (1/8" bit) instead of the machine drill, we could rivet properly and didn't need the tape.

I'm rather pleased with our design and overall result. More importantly, I learned about ~¡400!~ new skills that I feel confident with now, including:

*folding with a giant folding machine*hand drilling*riveting*drafting*brainstorming*machine drilling*wire cutting*teamwork*aluminum taping*first-aid*helping*adapting from inevitable failure to ensure moderate success*

This afternoon we'll test our stoves with real live charcoal.

Stove #2: Cardboard Model

After we brainstormed, we made a cardboard model of our stove. We didn't have to construct the main rectangular body- we used a pre-constructed box (from an Amazon shipment) (I'm open to product placement deals).
We adjusted our initial design as we went along.

We cut out the bottom to improve air flow to the charcoal.

Our heat partition fit quite nicely within the box, and we made a handle to pull it out and in.

The charcoal drawer inserts into the box.

And can be pulled out, too. We added slits on the bottom of the drawer to allow for air flow.

The chimney was tricky business. This cardboard design was a triangular prism that attached to the back of the stove.

We cut out handles from the side for portability.

(Isabella, Luisa, Maria, and Kalyani (the photographer))

Time to break out the sheet metal!