“Make it work, make it happen, and make it right. Once you create something, your name is on it"
Metal Foundry
(Presentation with speaker notes)
Overview
My peers (Mannan and Kaustubh) and I produced a mini metal foundry because we wanted to build something special for the school as a senior/parting gift. In fact, we all find this an interesting project as we think it had numerous applications. In fact, it will be useful for upcoming students in Engineering Design II as they will have more options for creating their projects. This was the "Brainstorm" part of our Design Process. In the end, we dedicated this project to our good junior friend, Shane.
Design Process
1. Technical Drawings
After brainstorming, we began to create a 2D Design of the metal foundry by creating "Technical Drawings" as seen below. It was a simple sketch in order to help better understand the metal foundry and have some sort of visual idea of the product before we started to make it.
2. SketchUp
The two pictures represent 3D orthographic renderings of the metal foundry. The units of these renderings are meters. In terms of the design process, the 3D renderings provided a great insight in the prototyping stage as it gave us an idea what the metal foundry will look like and it helped us develop a specific procedure for the building/manufacturing phase of the project.
3. Manufacturing
During the manufacturing process, we first had to create the coating for the metal foundry. In order to do so, we needed equal parts of plaster and sand and 0.71 part of water. Through some qualitative judgement and mathematical calculations, we decided to use 1.5 litres of plaster and sand and about 1 litre of water. After that, we mixed all of it together until there was a homogeneous mixture and then slowly poured it into the steel bucket and left a few inches from the top. After that, we immediately placed the small bucket into the mixture and pushed it down towards the bottom. After that, we let the coating harden for a while (approx. 15 min) and then we decided to drill a slanted hole into the foundry in order to create a place for ventilation. We created an initial hole using a drill bit and then, we attached the hole saw and drilled a hole into the side of the foundry. We ensured the diameter of the hole was enough for the pipe to fit in. After letting the coating dry for a while longer (approx. 30 min), we decided to remove the tiny metal bucket using clamps. We faced many challenges in this part as the tiny bucket was very difficult to remove. We had to use a variety of tools in order to remove the tiny bucket and it took up more time than we expected. Lastly, we created the lid by remaking the coating (but a small proportion) and placed a U-Bolt in the mixture to act as a handle. After we let the lid mixture dry, we drilled a hole on the top. However, part of the lid broke during the removal process and hence, we had to adjust the sides to ensure it traps as much heat as possible.
4. Final Product
Reflection
Overall, I gained a lot from working on this project. For instance, many of my important technical skills improved such as hand drawing skills and building skills. Building skills involve a variety of sub-skills. Not only that, our collaboration skills also improved as we created a group chat, created a whole plan together, and communicated effectively during the build phase. Also, our problem-solving skills increased greatly as we faced numerous problems and had to make tough choices on the spot. As we encountered totally new problems, this required us to do a lot of divergent thinking and come up with creative solutions to problems. Learning these skills now will help me greatly when I do similar work in college or at a job. On a bigger scale, our project management skills also improved. We all showed better time management during this project as we were able to complete the whole project in a week and a half (earlier than expected). Lastly, during this project, I displayed the "Contributor" and "Communicator" aspects from the ASD profile as I was respectful of my peers, open-minded towards their ideas, and most importantly, collaborated with them effectively.