Week 10 Post

This week we assembled our prototype and tested it. The prototype took about 1 hour to completely dry a shirt compared to 2 hours for a shirt that was hung out to dry. So IT WORKS!! The fire was not as large as we would have liked due to a shortage of firewood, given a better fire we think the could have dried the shirt in a shorter amount of time. Also a thunderstorm ended our testing early. The prototype was very portable, we were able to carry the parts around in a sports bag. The assembly was easy we had everything together in about an hour. We used clear plastic painters cover for the chamber. We had a thermometer that could take readings from inside and outside the chamber. The highest temperature reached inside the chamber was 107 degrees Fahrenheit while the outside temperature was about 70 degrees. There was a good amount of air flow coming from the pipe at the fire's hottest. Condensation formed on the inside of the chamber and collected at the bottom.

Fire and Pipe

Drying Clothes

Super Portable Prototype

Week 9 Post

This week we gathered all of our materials for the prototype. We tested several different kinds of metals in a fire and determined that black steel was the best option. As you can see from the images below the black steel pipe held up well in the fire, other options like galvanized steel pipe and copper did not  perform as well. We are working on assembling the chamber and putting all of the parts for the prototype together. The prototype should be completed very soon. In the upcoming week we plan to test the prototype and prepare our presentation. Last week we also received news that Drexel had passed on the opportunity to patent our project so the engineering team plans to seek a patent anyway.

Week 8 Post

This week we continued researching materials for the conductive pipe. We decided to use pvc pipe for the non conductive section of pipe due to its price, ease of use and durability . We also decided to use steal L frame like the one these shelves are made out of, to construct the clothes compartment because it is easy to assemble and can be broken down into small, portable pieces. This weekend we will be making a trip to the hardware store to buy the materials we require. We also decided to fill the hole below the pvc pipe with gravel or rocks so the water can have a place to escape and  put a check valve at the bottom of the curve so the water that forms from the condensation from the humid air can escape. The check valve will also prevent the pipe from filling with water from the ground. Next week we will assemble and test our prototype with an anemometer we purchased.

L Frame Shelving

Modified U Bottom With Check Valve

Week 7 Post

This week we made the decision to use an existing solution for the wringer component of our design. This will allow us to focus all of our efforts on the conductive heater. We finished our ProENGINEER design for the conductive heater. Now we want to make a prototype to prove the concept of the design. We are still working on some of the details of the design such as the materials we will use and a few of the dimensions. We also met with Professor Hearn to present our ideas to her. She was really happy with what we came up with and also provided us with some valuable feedback that should help us improve our design. She suggested we use metal for the frame of the clothing compartment since using wood would warp and rot in the humidity. This week we will start constructing a prototype of the conductive heater and run tests with it.

Pro Engineer Design of Conductive Heater

Hand Drawn Design for Conductive Heater and Clothing Compartment

Week 6 Post

This last week we started making ProENGINEER models of our designs. We completed the basic design for the wringer which squeezes the water out of the clothing and are working on the design to heat the clothing(see Picture 1). We also started researching the materials we will use for the devices. For the wringer we will probably use a metal. The metal needs to be rigid and noncorrosive and should not leave the clothing with any odor or discoloring. One metal we considered for this is stainless steel. However stainless steal is expensive so we are still looking for a more affordable alternative. The material for the heating device needs to be a good conductor so it will get as hot as the fire it is placed in, this means it will also disperse of its heat quickly so we may need to use some sort of insulator around it. The material also must have a melting point above the temperature of the fire or else the pipe will just melt in the fire. We are also looking to try to minimize the environmental impact of the materials we choose. We also looked into ordering some of the parts for our prototype design from a couple different places but so far we have not ordered anything.

Picture 1 - Conceptual Wringer Design

Week 5 Post

Picture 1 - Beautiful Bioko Island

The fifth week was one of the most beneficial weeks among all the past five weeks. It involved a lot decision makings and a big leap towards, actually starting designing. We were in a condition where we had a lot of ideas and it was hard to decide on one specific idea. So, we classified all the methods we found useful and made a classification tree to show all the potential ways of drying clothes and to analyze their feasibility. We hope that the concept tree together with the decision matrix we made will help us to decide on which design to pursue. On the decision matrix we weighted the different needs as to how important they were to the design. To reach the decision matrix click this link. The outcome of the decision matrix shows that the best design is our conductive heater that transfers the heat from the fire to a chamber that contains the clothes and dries them. We are also designing a device that we can roll the clothes through  and will squeeze the majority of the water out (see video on week 4 post). As we said before (in week 4) there are two stages to our project, this device will be used in the first stage of the drying process. We also spent some time reworking our project overview. In the upcoming week we plan to make an AutoCAD/ProENGINEER design of our device.

Picture 1 was taken from the website http://bigblue1840-1940.blogspot.com/2011_11_01_archive.html

Week 4 Post

After a few meetings in and out of the lab we decided that we are going to work on the drying process in two steps. The first step will be a bulk drying where we roughly process the wet clothing and get rid of the bulk of the water. The second step is going to involve a more precise drying. After this step the clothing should be pretty much ready to be worn. We came up with a lot of different ways that we could use for both steps. We put the different ideas in a Concept tree to make it easier for use to decide which one to use. Some ideas for the second step of the drying process are using solar heat to create a greenhouse effect, to make use of the heat of camp fire that is often available, vacuuming the clothing to decrease the boiling point of the water and in this way vaporize the water to dry clothes and spinning the clothing fast enough to make it dry.

Here are some existing ideas that were used by other engineers or designers:

This design is similar to the spin drying design that we were thinking about. It is connected to the bicycle and human powered.

This Video Shows the mechanism that our team is planning on designing for the first stage of the drying process, drying the bulk of the water. Even though it does not really serve the same purpose on this video, it is not really different from our proposed idea.