CoupeKiwi

Sheesh, I haven’t posted here for a while. Main reason is uni sucking every inch of motivation and thought processing capability.
I recently changed my major from Mechatronics to Product Development. The degree shares the first half and starts to separate in the 3rd year. I should have done this much sooner but I was a pussy so have a bit of catching up to do.  I decided long ago that I did not want to be a technician but was too caught on the thought of following what my father has done to balls up and figure out what I wanted to do. In my younger years I remember thinking often of how someone should make this, or you could totally make that better if you did this, invent this and use it to do this.

The ideas around creating at the moment are what excite me. Building something from nothing. Something that is way better than everything else. Something so far outside the box that people are scared of it. Something that you didn’t even know you even needed but when it appears you have to have it. Material object or a service or an application or a process…

One of the projects of last semester was the “Lucifer Lopper”. A Lucifer is an old brand of match. Essentially a match stick cutter.
We were required to design a machine that uses 30psi compressed air to spin a turbine to power a mechanism that cut matches to 24.3mm at a rate of 1 every 2 seconds.
This is an exercise to get us into designing machines. Of course you will never use a match stick cutter. At first I thought it was a load of rubbish, but it is actually a very very good way of getting people into designing actual things. A lot of the guys have never been in a work shop before.

This is the best design from last year: (and big ups to Dan, it’s good as).

There were a few flaws though, 3 in particular that I wanted to address with my design.

1. The operating noise level was insane due to the turbine design.
2. The price to build it was crazy expensive due to the amount of expensive material used.
3. The shear size of the machine. It’s big.

We were supposed to come up with a design, go to him and get it checked where he will tell you everything that is wrong with it and you can make it better.
I did not do this.
If I had done this, I know that mine would have turned out pretty much exactly like the one above. Basically everyone else’s did. That is stupid.

You may (but probably won’t) remember my post about the VPCD (here) project which was similar. I housed a motor and planetary gearbox inside the drum to save a huge amount of space. I used a similar design for this.

Instead of using an impulse turbine (think pelton water wheel) like the above design which requires pressure, I went for a reaction turbine (like a jet engine) which works better with flow. In using flow over pressure we spread the energy required over a much larger area and there for the noise is drastically reduced. I also wanted the design to vent the air away rather than having it vent to atmosphere/the room you are working in.

Anyway, heres what I ended up with. I would change a lot, especially the knife design but meh, rushed it.

Initially I had a 3 stage gear set inside but this gave a 6000:1 reduction ratio and I thought this may be too much based on the air flow capabilities.
You can see the air is forced into a tight space to increase the velocity. The end flutes hold the gearbox in place from each end and are sealed on the rotating drum by an o-ring.
All the bearings are special self lubricating plastic so no oil is required (unlike the other design). I could talk a lot about everything but I don’t think it’s necessary.

It would need some more time spend on it to get it to a stage where it can actually be built. I would change a lot of things if I were to build it.

As you can see though it meets the criteria I set at the start. Small, quiet and much less material used. It would cost more to build a one off but less if you wanted to make 10000.

Now the best part… Marking interview.

So he sits down beside me and legit thinks I’m working on a concrete mixer. He begins to tell me I’m stupid for not going to him to check, to which I reply “but then it would have looked like everyone elses”. He had no idea where to start so I worked him through how it all works. Every question he had I answered.
He begins to bring up and argument which I remember him going on about in lectures. His argument is about how when Morris brought out the  Mini Cooper with the front wheel drive front engine design, it was the best that anyone could have done. That’s why new cars are still build in front wheel drive front engine today, because there is no way better to do it.
Before he could continue with the story I finished it for him and asked him if he thought that in 20 years, new cars will have an internal combustion in the front of it driving the wheels with shafts? He went quite because the answer is obviously no. Motors will be electric, and inside the wheels (or something, We’re working on it). It is for this reason I know we will be forced into recreating what the past has already given us.

The funny thing is, he quoted in one of his lectures a passage in the bible (random, and why I remembered it) that says

There is a path which no fowl knoweth, and which the vulture’s eye hath not seen.

which is absolutely true, yet here he is telling me to do the opposite which is rather hypocritical.

He begins to tell me I am dangerous and foolish for thinking outside of the box and gave me 1 out of 10 for following the rules, which I don’t care because I know hes wrong.
I then make him give me 10 out of 1o for the other things which were based around design, improvement, clear goals, paperwork (I backed up all my claims in the report) etc  to which he agreed.

The main points of the post were not about the match stick cutter, but rather the idea or thought behind a design and then actually executing it.
I like the idea of seeking forgiveness rather than asking for permission. If you ask for permission you will never get anywhere. If you execute ideas you will. You can have a thousand ideas for something every day but it you don’t do anything about it, they were all useless.

At the moment, especially in technology, getting to a market first is absolutely key. Facebook just bought instagram for a billi. I can grantee you that if Kevin Systrom (founder of instagram) waited a month longer to get it all perfect, someone else would have done it before him.

I’m thinking about posting more to this blog, actually treating it like most bloggers and opening up to my thoughts, not just random stuff I do with cars. It has advantages and disadvantages and I need to decide if it’s worth it. Maybe later I will expand on that. If you actually read all that – thank you.