DRAFT: This module has unpublished changes.

Progress Report, Week 4: February 28th

This week, we were provided with the guidelines for the upcoming presentation. As Mo did not present last semester, he will be presenting. Additionally, as Jibril has worked with him on two of the three homework assignments that will be part of the presentation, we have also decided to have him present. Additionally, we are beginning to add more to the pages in preparation for the presentation. This includes updating the contact page with our group member information and filling in the remaining pages in the pre-created sections. We expect to finish the majority of this "content-filling" by Monday, prior to class. Afterwards, we would like to touch up minor details and will book a presentation booth in North Reading Room to practice during the week.

 

Regarding the manufacturing of our part, we spoke with George, a machinist, in the mechanical engineering department on Monday prior to class. Some of his concerns involve holding the plastic in a vice in order to add threads. Additionally, the website from which we purchased the diaphragms and chestpiece rings from does not provide information regarding the threading. They have been contacted by email and phone, however, they have not responded to either method. Luckily, George said that he may be able to determine the threading if we provided him with the piece. Furthermore, due to the small size of our device, he may have extra steel or plastic for us to use (though we purchased aluminum).

 

After that meeting, Emily created a hand-drawn schematic* of the device, including measurements and our overall intended manufacturing. We returned with a plastic jar, the diaphragm, and the ring on Thursday. Unfortunately, George was not present due to medical issues and we approached another machinist, Lester. As a temporary pre-prototype, he fastened the three items together without adding a thread to the plastic jar on the same day. We will use this for more preliminary testing and will hopefully create another, with the aluminum, next week. As we only ordered two retaining rings, we may purchase more in the future.

 

More work was done involving readily available or cost-effective materials for our second membrane. Among some of the materials tested were nail polish, reflective ribbon, model glue, sandwich bags, lenticulated stickers and a lenticulated puzzle. Furthermore, we experimented with various of diaphragm materials, including microbeads, holographic stickers, nail polish (wet & dry), in addition to testing the location and orientations. We have saved these samples and intend to test them with the pre-prototype soon. Lastly, we would like to try the "homemade liquid crystal" with microbeads, as suggested by Dr. Liu, but have yet to figure out how to best make it and apply it to our device.

 

From the last meeting with Nubia on Thursday, our aluminum is located somewhere on campus, but has been temporarily misplaced through the residential mail system. We hope to receive this soon in order to provide it to the machine shop.

 

Ada Tsoi


*Hand-drawn Schematic Provided to Machinists: Design Sketch.jpg

DRAFT: This module has unpublished changes.