Early American Energy Project: Final Video

     Below is a link to the video Bella, Dylan and I had to turn in for the final step of our project.

     https://youtu.be/XJxgN7s3Tlo

Early American Energy Project: Reflection

     We had time to work on what our machine would look like in class last week. We already had a design in mind: using a water wheel connected to a circle by an axle and putting a stirring rod on the circle so it could agitate the milk as it spun. Since we knew our plan already, we kind of just goofed off for the rest of class, not realizing the few problems we would run into while building. I think that if we had focused on some key details of our design - rather than the general concept - we would have had an easier time.

     The problem started with cutting the circles. As you can see, they aren't very circular. This was because I could not find the circular saw, and I had not used a buzz saw in awhile. Anyway, when Dylan tried to drill cups into the water wheel (the bigger circle) the circle split and he had to make an entirely new one.

      To combat this in the future, the project should have a requirement forcing the students to turn in a detailed schematic of their machines, including how each part of the machine looks and functions. This would solve the issue we encountered when constructing the water wheel; it fell apart when we tried attaching the slats that would catch the water and turn the wheel. Focusing on the details would have made us create a specific, easy design for the wheel, which would have saved time and confusion.

Dylan, after destroying the original water wheel.

Me trying to find one drill bit in a bag full of screws and wrench sockets.

 Bella working on making the stands she and I built look good.

     Another task that could be added to up the difficulty of the machine and would require more creativity from the builders would be to add either a realism check or a space constraint. For example, say that all of the machines had to fit inside a cardboard box of Jolly's choosing. That would definitely add some (Apollo 13-esque) challenge to the project. The realism check could be applied to the smaller tasks. For example, it could be required of groups to actually churn butter or to actually dig a well. It would be impractical for a group to actually pull a log to town using wind power, so it would work best with the smaller tasks.

     Overall, our design was very small and mobile (as opposed to Claire's, Christophe's and Brien's huge, albeit amazing, wood saw).
     Having the groups go through and complete the tasks that were considered routine in colonial days would give them a better insight as to how hard it was to get things done before modern technology existed.

Butter Churn Design Technical Drawings

 

This photo shows how the energy source will be harnessed. The water will be poured onto the water wheel, which uses the water's motion as energy and turns because of it.

 This image shows that, once the wheel uses the water's motion to turn, the axle attached to the wheel will turn as well. Then the energy is transferred from this axle to the wheel, which also turns because of its contact with the axle.

The last drawing shows how the energy is applied to the task. The axle spins the last wheel, which has a rod connected to it, just outside of the center (where the axle is attached). As the wheel turns, this loosely attached rod will not rotate around the wheel. Instead, it will maintain its downward orientation. This will allow it to be guided by the jar that will have the cream in it. Hopefully, the rod will have enough movement to agitate the cream to form milk.

Early Butter Churner Design Brief

This is a prototype design brief, as formatted in the style of my Principles of Engineering class.

Design Brief:

Client: Mr. Jolly.

Consumer: The hypothetical, early-colonial American settlement that needs to churn butter, but does not have the time nor manpower, so decides to harness water as the power source.

Problem Statement: The colonial era had a severe lack of current-day power sources. They were mainly limited to wind, water or animal-produced power. They also had a plethora of tasks to complete every day - made harder by the lack of power sources to make work easier. These colonists want to develop different ways to connect the powers they do have to the tasks they need doing.

Solution Statement: We are going to create a system that harnesses water to churn butter. The system will use a water wheel to harness the water's energy (in this case the motion of the water). This will turn the wheel, thus turning the axle, which leads to another wheel with a loosely attached rod (like a train's wheels). This rod will be attached to the turning wheel in such a way that it will move freely and can be guided to agitate the cream to form butter.

Validity: This design should fulfill all the requirements and solve the problem of connecting a colonial power source to a colonial task.

Solution Criteria:

• Needs to use an early American power source.
• Must complete a colonial task.
• Needs to be built by the students and designed to look presentable.
• Must be recorded and put online through our blogs.

Solution Constraints:

• Due Thursday, October 15th.
• Cannot be turned in conventionally in class.
• There is not necessarily a budget, but we do not want to spend a whole lot.

The Early American Energy Challenge: Butter Churning

 

https://goo.gl/0u538r

      In my high school U.S. History class, we have been assigned an interesting design challenge by our teacher. The class was split into groups of (hopefully) three. Then, each group was randomly assigned an early-time power source and task to complete with said power source. My group's task is to churn butter by harnessing the power of water to do all the dirty work for us.

     Our roles are as follow:

1. Dylan Buren - Project Manager
2. Bella Medina - Industrial Designer
3. William McTaggart (a.k.a. Me) - Mechanical Engineer.

     We have already started planning our machine and we think our design will work to fill the project's requirements. However, as an added challenge, we want to see if we can actually agitate cream enough to make butter. Our efforts and processes will be posted here.

     Until next time.