WEEK 13

 💫 What did we learn?

For this week's tutorial session, we learnt 2 main aspects for a product and its design.

1. Operating principles

2. Mechanism

🔍 Operating Principle

Operating principle is defined as how things work. All devices and equipment are designed in a way that utilizes different operating principles. They can be either mechanical, electrical, chemical or magnetism.

An example will be how distillation uses the differences in relative volatilities to separate components in a mixture.

Specifically for our chemical product, we are trying to solve the problem for the loss in quality, taste and time when reheating refrigerated leftover food. Thus, we have come up with a Battery powered food preservation light box without the use of heat.

The operating principle of our product is the radiation of light to kill the bacteria in food in order to preserve them.

Next for the group will be that we will start researching about which material can we use for this device to minimize light emission to the surroundings, what lights are commercially available and useable for such purposes and what intensity of light should we use to preserve food best?

🔧 Mechanism

The mechanism such as mechanical movements is the one which enables and enhances principle.

In engineering terms, mechanism transforms forces and movement into a desired set of output forces and movements.

We were also taught 6 essential mechanism that work in a functional prototype.

1. Actuator

2. Cams

3. Gears

4. Lever

5. Ratchets

6. Springs

 ✂ Group Assignment

For this group assignment, our group is tasked to design a ping pong ball launcher that can shoot and reload using different mechanisms to propel the ball with stored energy.

This is what the group came up with:

And that is the end of our week 13's tutorial session!