Week 5

About the model

I come back on Monday and check the model, it is not completely cured yet. So I left it for one more day and it is still not working. It is possible that the proportion of silicone was not right when I mixed them. The only thing that might help with this situation right now is to put it in an oven and use UV light to let it cure.

One other thing that was wired about it is that the straight tube bent when the silicone was curing. I think it is because there's air inside the tube which is lighter than the silicone. The gravity was pulling the silicone down and thus the tube bent in the middle.

I did finish this model this week, but unfortunately, it didn't work. As I mentioned, the silicone wasn't curing probably because the proportion of mixture I got was wrong. The model turned out to be squishy and soft rather than a solid piece. I had to do all the work all over again.

You can see in this picture that the silicone deform easily when I hold it. That is not supposed to happen.

This is quite frustrating for me because I did everything almost perfectly. Because of not getting the proportions right, I have to redo everything over again.

So I started all over again with the other 3D printed parts. This one was broken on the bottom so I took me longer to fix it but that wasn't too hard. It was still really challenging for me to glue the box together from acrylic boards. The boards keep falling apart as I try to put them into the right place. The boards that we use this time is also not very clean cut on the edge which makes it even harder to be kept in place. One thing I did this time to prevent leaks on the edge is that I used the acrylic glue which could seal the sides well first. Hopefully, this will reduce the number of leaks from the box.

About 3D designing parts

One other thing I started working on this week is designing a part that is used in an MRI project. This part is supposed to be used for holding the end of the syringe which is connected to a motor behind it. I used Solidworks, a 3D design software to recreate the part. I never used Solidworks before so I have to learn each feature by watching tutorials on Youtube. It was hard at first and now I am getting better at this.

I measured the data on the origional one that needed to be improved.

The process of designing the new part.