Week 13

     This was our final week before the presentation. We did not meet on Monday as classes were cancelled for Easter Break. This week we updated our Deliverable 7 (which summarized the testing done and which requirements specifications were met). We also submitted our final design notebook this week. Finally, we spent time working on the final presentation. An image of the first slide can be seen below.

The title slide of our presentation.

Week 12

     This week, we continued working on our poster (the draft was due Wednesday). This involved adding more pictures of relevant topics and including some text elaborating on some of the topics. One of the things that we tried to keep in mind while creating the poster was that Dr. Gordon (our adviser) wanted very little text. Therefore, we tried to keep the explanations short and succinct, with the idea that more detail could be given to interested parties when we present the poster and our project. This also included rearranging the poster so that it was a bit more chronological and aesthetically pleasing. The draft submitted to Dr. Gordon can be seen below.

This is the draft of the poster that was submitted to Dr. Gordon.

     We also spent some time this week trying to get the Arduino to run off of battery power. Currently, our system needs to be plugged into a laptop via USB to run. However, Arduinos are intended to be used un-tethered as well, and can store code in their internal memory. We bought a 9V battery to power the Arduino. However, we ran into some issues where the code would not run once the Arduino had been unplugged from the computer. We consulted a few people who have more experience using Arduinos, and their opinions were that something might be wrong with our board. We will look into the problem, and possibly use another Arduino board for the time being.

Week 11

     This week during class Dr. Gordon did not have much feedback for our group, aside from saying that he felt like our project was in a good place and that we had made good progress thus far. During the remainder of the class (and for the rest of the week), we started working on our poster. The poster is similar to a conference-style poster and will be printed out to be displayed at the end of the year at the engineering showcase and graduation ceremony. It is due on Wednesday of Week 12, but we started getting some of the basic content that we want on it.

This was one of the example templates given to students.

This is a basic outline of the sections and images that we would like to include on our poster. We are waiting to hear back from our adviser if CBU will allow us to change the heading border to a style similar to this (we feel as though it is more visually appealing/professional-looking).

Week 10

     During class this week, we met with Dr. Gordon to discuss our progress on the project and then glued the bearings to the "arm" of the brace so that they did not move around. We believe that this was one of the reasons why we had issues last week while testing the new dual system.
     Once the glue had dried, we tested the dual system using the force plate. Isaac was also available for testing, so the leg brace was worn by its intended user (the current leg brace was customized to fit Isaac's leg). The glue seemed to help immensely, as the system worked far better this week.
     As stated in previous blog posts, our target is 140 N, as our research has shown that this amount of force should be sufficient to completely prevent bone density loss while in space. We were able to reach and exceed this amount of force during testing. The results for some of the testing we did can be seen below. (All of the data was gathered from Isaac standing vertically on the force plate.)

Data from testing summarized in a table. As can be seen, we generated approximately 205 N of force for some of the trials.

The data in the table was obtained from saving the data points during test and graphing them in a plot. This allowed the peak-to-peak force to estimated.

As can be seen from the two plots, the peak-to-peak force for different motor speeds (given in "Arduinos") may be estimated.

     This testing showed that we can reach our target force, which is encouraging. However, one of the issues we ran into was that the system was a bit uncomfortable to wear. We will look into addressing this, whether we need to make the brace more comfortable (such as by adding foam as a cushion) or decreasing the amount of time that the system needs to be worn during each use. 

     We also revised and reprinted the motor casing this week. The previous case had very tight tolerances, so the spinning brass masses were very close to the side/wall of the casing. We found that when we put the lid on the original case, it would push the sides in, which would interfere with the spinning masses. Our second version is slightly bigger to accommodate this, and has a shorter lid to help avoid the issue as well. The second revision of the case can be seen in the images below. (We did not have a chance to use the new casing as it was printed at the very end of the week. It will be incorporated into the system at the beginning of Week 11).

View of the new motor casing with the lid off.

The motor casing with the lid on.