This was the last and final week of our SEED internship. As things were wrapping up in the last couple of days, the OxyCal team was finishing up our project before the big presentation on Wednesday.

 

We continued iteration on the battery compartments. With recommendation from our client (Nishant), we decided to switch over to Acrylic as the material, so that we could use acrylic glue to create an airtight seal. After adjusting the files and experimenting to get the exact dimensions of the acrylic, the grooves, and the teeth, we laser cut it and put it all together. And then it broke as we put it into the box. Having ran out of Acrylic material of this size, we decided to switch our approach and build an external battery compartment, which would be much simpler and easier to implement.

Our instructors, Dr. Wettergreen and Dr. Hunter gave us another idea. We folded up some cardboard, cut some pipes, drilled some holes, hot glued it all together, and we had a new battery holder. One that gave us no leakage and was much more simple to put together.

We built 2 of these low-fidelity prototypes, and had the boards ready to be inserted. When we put the boards in, and connected the battery boards to it. We powered it up and got mixed results. the amplification was at maximum for no reason. We started to debug the boards, but failed to figure out the problem they had. We were unable to build the 3 working boards and have them fully tested in time for the presentation.

Although we were unable to arrive at conclusive results regarding the reliability of these boards, We did make valuable contributions to the team throughout the summer. We found some problems with the design of their board and fixed it, developed reliable battery holders, and started work on a digital circuit.

This is also not the end for OxyCal. I’m willing to help the original team as much as I can throughout the school year. Charity and Tiwonge also agreed to continue work on the project from Malawi. During cleanup, they packed a couple of  boards and components together to take back home.

 

 

Overall, SEED 2017 was a great experience for me here in the OEDK. I learned how to use the Lasercutter, Solder Reflow oven, Solidworks, Illustrator, 3D printers, Eagle, PCB files, and many more. These are skills I will carry on with me for the rest of my engineering career!

I’m grateful for this SEED program and all the support I received throughout the project. the OEDK is truly a great place and I feel so lucky to have unrestricted access to this place as a student.

I’ll also miss the international students. I learned a lot from my Malawian teammates and we all had a fun time together.

After documentation, I’m looking forward to Critical mass, continuing work on my Ebike (finish building the battery), and building a DC motor controller the Rice EV team.