Final Post

Our Presentation

Today, we presented our project in Cumnock Hall. Although our project failed to meet our requirements, we still had a great time working on it. Everyone seemed to be understanding of our bubble machine and how it should have operated.

After experiencing the design process for our project, we figured out a few things that we could have improved on regarding the specifications for the apparatus. We stumbled across time constraints and time management, as gluing the fan required at least 30 minutes to apply and dry, which prevented us from working on our project with efficiency. A way to alleviate this problem was to use a better adhesive or a hot glue gun to speed up the process. Furthermore, all of our wires were poorly connected to the dc motor, so less power was generated for the fan. We should have also bought more battery holders to have a higher energy capacity, so the fan would spin at a faster rate, as well as a higher voltage dc motor, rather than use the one provided from the Sparkfun Inventor's Kit. Lastly, we figured out that our SolidWorks sketch of our fan was not aerodynamic enough for the fan to spin effectively.

We believed that the greatest positive coming out of this project was that the Arduino code met all of our specifications and requirements to move the bubble wand and operate the fan.

All in all, our group had a fun time working on this project, despite the fan not being able to blow out bubbles. We hope you enjoyed reading our blog posts and following us along our journey in completing our Awesome Bubble Contraption!

 

Group Contributions

Pisal Horth - worked on the apparatus, drew the sketch for the SolidWorks fan
Richard Lim - worked on the apparatus, team blogger, worked on the "literature" for the project
Steven Ouk - wrote the Arduino code, set up the circuits for the Redboard and breadboard, worked on the "literature" for the project

Week of December 9th

For our very last meeting, we were able to buy a new DC motor from RadioShack. We were also able to finally complete our apparatus and tested to see if it would fulfill what we set out to do. Below is a picture of the finished product and a video of how it turned out.

As you can see, the fan was not able to blow bubbles from the wand. We believe that the DC motor did not generate enough power, even at 7.5 volts.

Week of December 2nd

This meeting, every member was present. Today we got our SolidWorks part from the engineering lab. Once we got our part, we attached it to the DC motor and the finished product is shown at the bottom of today's post. Unfortunately, all of the wires from our DC motors detached from their respective motors, therefore, we must get a new one in order to complete the apparatus. This mishap has delayed our completion of the apparatus and project. For our next meeting, we will be getting a new DC motor and finish our project. Stay tuned for next week's post!