Assembled

The project is fully assembled, however we are running into issues that looks like we will have neither the time nor money to solve.

Finished the gear train and housing

We finished the gear train, ribs, and housing!

Week 9 Lab

Considerable progress was made in lab today. The ribs were sanded and reamed to fit within their connecting bracket. The final bracket is printing and should be done as of now. Metal bar, that was ordered previously, has been cut, drilled, and mounted to the bicycle using bolts. This will serve as a mounting point for the dynamo. The electrical circuitry fits within the container incorporated into one of the ribs. The gears were sanded slightly so the fit together better. The gear shafts were also cut to length. All that is left is to attach the second bracket, secure the full dynamo, set up the gear train including the motor, attach the motor to the electrical circuitry, mount the dynamo to the bike, and perform testing.

Week 9 Pre-Lab

The plan of attack for lab this week is to completely mount the dynamo to the bicycle. This will involve finishing the dynamo and using metal plate for mounting.

Week 9 Pre-lecture

There is not much to update on as we get down into our final weeks of the term. We are struggling to get everything assembled as we are waiting on key deliverables from different group members. As soon as these deliverables are made, everything can fall into place.

Nearly Done

We are nearly done with the full assembly of our project. We are ordering some metal bars to attach or dynamo to our bike and we have only one part left to 3D print. After that, we will be completely focused on assembly so we can begin testing.

Ribs

All of the ribs have been printed and reamed. The gear shafts all spin smoothly in their slots. We are finishing up the mounting components and then we will be able to test the entire project.

Pre Week 8 Lecture

We are starting to get down to our final remaining weeks in this course and in this term. Everything is finally falling into place now. We are very excited to begin testing our product.

Pickup of phone mount

We picked up the phone mount that we will be using in our project, yesterday. It fits well on our bike and can hold an array of different cell phones.

3D Printed Parts

The 3D printed parts are slowly being printed. They are now the correct size and match our design.

Week 7 Lab

After week 7 lab, we have all designs completed. We are now completely focused on manufacturing and assembly.

Pre Lab Week 7

We were able to submit our rough draft of our final report before lab this week. We feel that our report was fairly well put together so we hope to see a good grade coming back for that.

The 2nd round of 3D printing was started today. I will be checking in on that throughout the week, hopefully we can get those parts turned around rather quickly, without flaws.

Rough Draft of Design Proposal

We are starting our rough draft of the design proposal today.

3D Parts 2.0

The second round of 3D printing is underway. This time we hope to see finished products matching the desired sizes.

Update

Today, I was able to finish machining to motor to gear attachment part by heading in early in the morning to work on a mill before the seniors got to the machine shop. Afterwards, I cut the previously 3D printed parts, as we will be trying to put them in a machine to be ground up and re-extruded as filament.

Theo was also able to make the bike tire-to-dynamo connecting gear/wheel. It is comprised of two of the gears we ordered in a set mounted on an axle and then sprayed with a rubber material. It took about 10 coats, but the final product should nicely interact with the tire of the bike in the way we need it to.

Lab Week 6

Unfortunately, today in lab, our group experienced a few setbacks. The 3D printed ribs did not come out properly and were scaled down by 70%. They will need to be reprinted. We are currently looking into shredding the current ribs in order to recycle the plastic into more 3D printed objects. The machine shop is also working at max capacity as all of the seniors are working on their senior design projects. This means the mills (which are necessary for completing our project) are booked essentially all day, everyday.

So, I will be going into the machine shop Thursday morning at 7 a.m. in order to start working on a mill, and the 3D parts will be reprinted, this time at full scale. The final dynamo holder and phone case are under development, but have a deadline of Friday this week. And the bike wheel to dynamo gear is currently being made using a spray on rubber product and gears from the set that we previously ordered.

Prelab Week 6

This week in lab, we plan on checking the print quality of our first 3D printed object, and if everything is fine, to continue printing the remainder of the internal pieces needed for our dynamo. After that, time will be dedicated to machining the new gear-motor connector. Finally, the externals of our project will be laid out so we can get an idea of what needs to be done for the rest of the project.

Electrical Circuitry Finalized

Today, all of the electrical components were soldered together, fully completing the electrical component of this project. The ribs that will support the internal mechanisms in the dynamo are currently in the process of being 3D printed. Work was also made towards making a new motor to gear adapter, as a new 6V high-speed motor was purchased in order to produce more electricity.

Gear Chain

Yesterday, our team redesigned our gear chain, making it so for every rotation of the bicycle tire, the motor should rotate at about 15,000 rpm, traveling at 5mph. This should produce the electricity output that we are looking for. In addition, we also have finalized our circuitry and we are working on constructing these. Finally, we have decided to three 3d print the majority of our casing as it will be cheaper in the long run.

Week 5 Lab

Today we divided up the duties for the rest of week five. Theo will be working on ordering gear shafts for the mechanical part of the dynamo, as well as doing some R&D into the best way to have our dynamo make contact with the bicycle tire. Mathieu is working on finalizing the designs for our dynamo internal framework. All the items that need to be 3D printed to create a compact package for the gear train and motor to fit inside. These items will be sent off to be printed as soon as possible. I went after class today to make final purchases of PC board and a 6V motor from Radio Shack in center city, and I will be working on putting all of the electrical components together this week.

Pre Week 5 Lab

Goals for this weeks lab is to finalize the layout for the circuitry, begin soldering everything into place, have a solid starting point for the CADD drawings, make sure our parts are integrating with each other so far, and assign tasks for the rest of the week.

Machined Part

The machined part to connect the motor/generator to the gear has been finished.

Motor to Gear Attachment

This week, a small part allowing the circular shaft of our motor to connect to the square holes of our gears, was machined. This part is pivotal in our design, as if it does not function properly, the dynamo will not work. The design challenges of this part include its small dimensions. The piece is less than 3mm by 3mm by 10mm. A hole that just fits the motor axle also has to be drilled into the part. The part is scheduled to be finished tomorrow, and once picked up, will be attached to the motor with either hot glue, solder, or epoxy.

Charging the Caps

After setting up the electrical circuitry, our group was able to verify that the electrical systems were charging when the motor was turned. Once we have greater mechanical advantage to turn the motor faster, we should be able to generate enough electricity to output 5 volts.

Week 4 Lab

Today in lab, we were able to successfully set up the circuitry necessary for the project. We were also able to verify that the motor we will be incorporating into our dynamo is able to generate electricity. Our gears, which also arrived through shipping, were measured and incorporated into our initial designs. A metal component is in the process of being machined to connect the gears with the motor. An update on the machined part will come later in the week.

Modeling

For our final product, we may do some math based modeling to determine the efficiency of our dynamo and then compare it to other dynamos on the market.

Plan for week 4 lab

The goal of week 4 lab is to begin constructing test circuits, identify where all other needed parts will be purchased (if necessary), and to begin the CADD drawings of our 3D printed containers.

Prelab Week 4

Week 4 is almost upon us and our halfway point through the term and the project are almost here as well. We will have to work efficiently in order to complete the project to the fullest of our abilities.

Shipment Received!

The gears we ordered to create our dynamo have just arrived! We nearly have all of our pieces!

Testing

The goal of this project is to generate enough electricity from our dynamo to be able to charge a phone battery. This means, at an average riding speed, the dynamo must generate around 5 volts. In order to test this we will attach a volt-ohm meter to the output of our system while pedaling the bike at various speeds in order to determine the dynamos voltage outputs. All this data will be recorded and graphs may be posted in the future of the dynamos capabilities.

Materials

Most of the materials, especially those needed for the electrical components, have been gathered or are currently being shipped. Parallel board still needs to be purchased, and 3D printed parts still need to be made, however we are this much closer to being able to start the project.

CADD Modeling

By the end of the project, we should have full CADD modeling for the components that will be posted here on the blog.

Pre Week 3

This upcoming week we will be focusing on ordering all the required parts for the project, getting a finalized cost estimate to this point, and doing any and all paperwork including working drawings for the project. Fusion 360 projects have also been submitted so funding should be coming in soon.

Shareability

We are currently updating the sharing capabilities on our blog. We have managed to work with AddToAny to incorporate a large number of sharing links into every post on our page. Soon we would like to have a GitHub button incorporated as well.

Grades

Grades for the design proposal and blog have been posted. Although they were not necessarily ideal, we will continue to strive for excellence throughout the rest of the project.

Parts and Budget

The hunt for parts is still underway. We are attempting to keep the cost of the project to a minimum and pull parts from wherever we can get them. An updated cost of project will be posted as a running tally as the timeline progresses.

Lab 2 Week 2

Lab went well. Professor Knight approved our project design and we have a green light to begin completing working drawings and acquiring materials. We have a list of electrical components compiled along with pricing and sellers. We are still looking into gears. Theo will be contacting sellers about those soon. Mathieu also really dove into the working drawings on CAD during class.

Project Proposal Submission

The team worked really hard finalizing our plans for this project into a concrete idea. It all really started coming together this past Monday, culminating in our finished design proposal. We went further with making design decisions than we initially planned, but that should only help us down the road. Now all there is to do is get it all approved and do the rest of the project!

Week 1

During this first week, our group was formed and we decided upon our topic. We assigned roles to each member to better assist in completing the project in an efficient manner. Finally, deliverables that we completed include the setup of this blog and the completion of the Design Proposal.