Progress Report, Week 10: April 11th
This week in class, we voted on who would go to URECA. We are waiting for the results. Additionally, the upcoming week is spring break and thus we moved our Friday meeting with Dr. Liu to Wednesday. We reorganized our priorities from the aluminum cone to fundamental testing for a baseline comparison. An important ideology we gleaned was "You can't keep improving your product if you don't know how it worked to begin with."
On Thursday, we attempted to do such testing. Unfortunately, these initial tests revealed no such movement. Even with the addition of the cone, which has been modified to be an arc of aluminum rather than a cut circle, there was no amplification of the vibrations. Among further discussion with Dr. Liu, these issues are most likely because the parts are not sealed to one another. This lack of permanant attachment allows for air leaking, undesirable as we would like a seal chamber for amplification. We have outlined our next steps:
- As we only have one jar with the bottom cut (required for direct mounting of the diaphragm), we will ask the machinists to create several more in anticipation for rapid prototyping and tests -- additionally, we will ask them to cut the tops off in order to prevent any restrictive movement caused by the housing lid. As it is a disposable device, concerns about damage are less important.
- We must seal the LDPE to the housing and prevent all possible air leaks- This involves lid to LDPE; LDPE to housing bottom; lid to bottom. Further incorporation of the alumium cone will require more gluing - We will not be using UV curing glue as it did not dry as quickly and is intended to be temporary.
- Preliminary test air-tightness of the device with water submersion.
Ada Tsoi