Entry 12: Construction Planning (A)

10 June 2012

By Kai Xiang (Destiny CKX)

After contacting Frankie, a construction expert who was helping us construct the prototype, I went down personally to his factory to discuss about the feasibility of the latest prototype.

Frankie, being an engineering expert, pointed out some of the issues of the prototype. They are as follows:

1. The legs of the display base (table) cannot be adjustable. Doing so would weaken the legs, which support the display base, thus causing it to break easily and topple over. However, he mentioned that he would see if it is possible to construct adjustable legs.

2. The display base cannot use the initial "slide" design as a sliding mechanism is

  a. too expensive

  b. tedious and difficult to construct in the time period

  c. there are better alternatives to this

Thus, the current best way would be to use an ordinary table, drill it into half, insert a board in the middle, drill holes into the sides of the table (and into the board), utilising the "Lock and Key" technique to expand the length of the table. However, this could potentially affect the stability of the table. Still, it was worth a try.

3. The custom hydroponics tray, with the input drilled lower than the output (in the widths of the tray), would cause a messy water current within the tray when water is channeled through. This would cause waste products from the aquaponics water to retain in the tray for long periods of time rather than flowing to the filter zone, hence would hinder the process of cleaning the tray, which was supposed to be rather easy. He suggested adding walls to the inner parts of the tray, which can help facilitate a constant directional water flow instead of a messy one.

He also discussed with me about extensions and he inspired me to come out with one new idea that could expand the use of our project:

Mini-turbines could be placed at the water output on the attachment of the fish tank, which would be naturally powered by kinetic energy from the continuous flow of water, thus this would create electricity which can have other functions in the aquaponics system. Frankie suggested for me to go along with this as it is easy to accomplish and a fresh new idea which is useful, thus can help boost our project overall.

The new prototype sketch after returning from the factory looks like this:

Table

Tray

Today's discussion with Frankie was fulfilling, however, Frankie had doubts on the overall "table" design. He felt that there were much cheaper and better alternatives to this. This probably means that we have to risk our creativity using the current prototype or come out with a totally fresh design in the short amount of time given. At least, I now know what opinions a member of the public would have about our prototype. I do hope that we, as a group, can be inspired either to improve heavily on this design or somehow come out with a new design.

Credits:

Thanks to Frankie for all the advice!