Proj. Manag.

Project Management 

Guidelines for Weekly Progress Reports

• • Weekly Progress Reports (see sidebar), the Gantt chart, and this Project Management page should be printed out before meetings with the sponsor and instructor.

  • All team members should be able to explain all items on the progress report.

  • Place a "*" at the beginning of the title of the active week Progress Report (see * in sidebar).

Gantt Chart

Overview of Project Context

IKA is a company focused on the design and production of chemical lab equipment, including mixers, shakers, centrifuges, and magnetic stirrers. The MAE 156B IKA Stirrer project seeks to design and fabricate a magnetic stirrer for mixing miniscule vials of fluid. Current magnetic stirrers are built to stir large volumes of material (>50ml), but the company hopes to pursue a product in the field of stirring small volumes, particularly for chemists that work with tiny amounts of expensive products (0.5ml-5ml).

Project Objectives

High Priority

                Design and fabricate a highly efficient magnetic coil that is capable of turning a 5ml stirring rod at a maximum rotation of 1000 rpm.

Second Priority

                Create a pattern or array of coils which will allow for stirring multiple probes simultaneously at the same speed.

Third Priority

                Make the magnetic stirrer battery-driven and inductive chargeable.

Other Constraints and Issues

•                 Stirrer must be capable of rotating a stirring rod at a minimum of 1000 rpm.

•                 Single coil must be within dimensions of 50mmx50mmx8mm.

WOW Design Solution

                Make the stirrers modular. Allow each stirrer to communicate with each other so that stirrers may be placed next to each other and interact with each other. Also allow the devices to be controlled by a phone app.

Risk Reduction Objectives

-          Do FEA analysis of magnetic field and flux density of various coil shapes and sizes.

-          Run a normal size magnetic stirrer while holding the stirring rod with a measuring device to determine the torque on the bar and do a calculation to determine if a smaller scale system would be theoretically feasible.

-          Possibly run the larger system in a fluid of higher viscosity to do a Reynolds number comparison to determine if the scaled down system will be able to spin at a velocity of 1000 rpm.

Risk Reduction Tests

Intermediate Milestones

1.       Create an efficient coil that will have a strong enough magnetic field to spin a small stirring bar.

2.       Implement a coil that can spin the magnetic bar at a minimum of 1000 rpm.

3.       Design a pattern or array of the coils which will allow the stirring of a minimum of 4 probes at the same speed.

4.       Make the device battery driven and inductive chargeable.

5.       Create a case that has a glass top for the magnetic stirrer

Weekly Meeting Time with Sponsor

                TBD for Spring 2017

Topics for Individual Component Analysis

                1. Magnetic Core analysis – Nick

                2. Coil Array/ Pattern – Jordan

                3. Coil Shape – Chris

                4. Battery Powered/ Inductance Charged – Edward

                5. Phone Controlled System/App Interface – Siddarth