ICE-BREAKER Weekly Reflection - Week 9

Project Status – Ziwei Xie

This passing week was a very productive week for us. We successfully finished GateReview3. The work includes the overall design of the product and the choice of material. Additionally, we did an experiment where we tested the performance of the product under certain circumstances. We verified the usability of the design we chose. In order to further determine the visual impression that different designs might have on people, we made a survey that checks all 8 designs with different colors (red or blue), shapes (curly or straight) and handles (with molded pattern spongy or not). The questions in the survey are about two properties of the designs; one is the durability and the other is the handle’s performance (in terms of comfort). The survey told us that most people liked blue curly designs with molded pattern spongy handle, proving that our choice is very correct.

Interesting finding –Chee Wee lee

Immediately after we got back our Gate review 2, we started our discussion on Gate review 3, particularly on the design of our product. During our discussion, we found out a lot of interesting stuff, including how the electric toothbrush works and how difficult it is to design the product we imagined so far. It may seem easy when you look at the electric toothbrush, but there is actually a bunch of stuff going on in it that needs some effort to figure out. One of the interesting thing we noticed in our project is that the way to link the motor shaft and the brush head is kind of complex and difficult. Firstly, if we stick the shaft in the hold on the brush head, it will most probably slip out of the hole as soon as the device is being put on the windshield with ice, due to the high frictional force between the brush and the icy surface. Secondly, assuming the shaft will not slip from the hole, the huge frictional force between the brush and the icy surface will cause a large torque on the motor shaft, which will most probably break the shaft in no time. It is really good to realize all these now before our product actually fails during the testing stage.

Challenges – Steven Kung

This week was a really tough week for me and the whole team. We finalized our design for the project, during which, we tested the product functionality, selected materials, and finished the engineering drawings. We suffered a very hard time in deciding the motor methods, the positions of each component, the materials and the external appearance of the product. During Tuesday’s  and Thursday’s meetings with Professor, we got ideas about how to change the CAD and finalized our product design, which enlightened us a lot. All of us worked more than 5 hours every day in this week to research, discuss, calculate and test our design again and again. Now we are in the final step of this week and also in the final step of Gate Review3. Although, it was a very hard week for me and the whole team, we made a big process for our project. I felt so excited to see the product designed by ourselves working so well. 

Future Plan –Queenie Lou

This week we are struggling with Gate Review 3. We changed our design in CAD several time. We finish the engineering drawings and manufacture plan. We bought all the parts for prototype and we will try to machine and assemble them next week. For the paper work, we will go to sweet land to revise our final report. We will meet with professor and Dr. Soo to finalize our design and product manufacturing process. After this, we can start to write our business promote plan and combine into our final report. After we finish our prototype, we can start to test by using our prototype.