There is not much to report for this week due to fall break and midterm exams. All of us were very busy preparing for exams and thus had to take a break from our brainstorming process. We have been looking into things to help design our website and plan on meeting up this weekend as a group to discuss things to include on the website. Thus our main goal for the coming week is to finish our website and to each spend some time doing some research into design ideas and patents. We aim in the next few weeks to meet with our client again to continue drafting design ideas that meet their specifications.
This week we all worked on helping Taylor prepare for the preliminary presentation. After the submission of the Preliminary report on 10/6/2017 we all attended the presentation preparation with the TA to ask her questions about the flow and appearance of the presentation. Upon receiving feedback we made edits and completed the presentation Sunday evening. The next few days Taylor rehearsed the presentation and asked for the group’s feedback. She then presented for the class on Wednesday.
We also all submitted our design notebooks for their first check. As a group we made sure that all our notebooks were up to date and that all major decisions were signed by all group members.
Moving forward we are continuing to research potential design solutions and patents relevant to our project. Furthermore, we are looking into how to develop our website for the upcoming due date.
This week we primarily did research and writing of the preliminary report. As a group we met several times to work on the report and wrote certain sections of the paper together (the need statement/project scope and team responsibilities). We each were assigned a section of the paper, Cassie primarily wrote the Background and made the Gantt chart, Taylor primarily wrote the Design Specifications, and Nick wrote the existing solutions. We all contributed to the literature search and patent search. Also we meet and edited the paper together to ensure flow.
We also worked on the presentation of the preliminary report as a group and have a rough draft of a slide show. We met with the TA Kristina this morning to go over the flow of the presentation. She gave us positive feedback of what we have so far and plan to finalize the presentation this weekend.
An update from our last meeting with our client, we received a lot of feedback about our design and further clarified the specs and need of the client. Dr. Postier clarified his needs to be the following:
1) Produce an instrument that measures the internal air pressure on a passageway to determine the impact of using a single nasal device is the most important thing to us.
2) Multiple independent device measurement is second. If one works, then we can make multiple copies of it. Multiple device measurement can mean multiple instruments. However, one instrument measuring multiple devices would be preferred. I think this is much more achievable than goal number 3 due to complexities of material choices.
3) Measure the impact of nostril dilation by the device. Making a design with a soft material that mimics the human nasal passageway is a challenge. I think this challenge is too big for a 9 month project.
Moving forward after the presentation we plan to continue to research potential design solutions and patents relevant to our project.
This past week we had one meeting to start brainstorming possible solutions and designs for the artificial breathing device. In our meeting we started with what the device needed to measure so we researched the different types of sensors that could be compatible with our project. We were able to find typical costs and potential force and pressure sensors. From there we started compiling ideas for generating pressure differences. We found a linear motor that could be the driver for establishing these pressure differences inside of a vacuum syringe. The linear motor would be at one end of the syringe and a hose attachment would be at the other. This will replicate the trachea and support the inserts for the NED device.
From there we thought it would be useful to have a hose splitter to mimic the nostrils that branch from the trachea. We have considered 3D printing an insert that would fit inside the nose splitter on each end and support the NED device. This will allow our machine to test pressure differences with and without the NED device per request of Dr. Postier. It could also allow for testing of different sized NED devices which was also a request of Dr. Postier. The hose splitter would make it possible for two NED devices to be tested at once so that it would replicate the conditions they would be used in. We were also able to get price ranges for the syringe case, hose, and hose splitters as well.
We have also done some research on patents and other similar breathing experiments in preparation for the preliminary report that is due next week.
We are planning to meet with Dr. Postier at 2 pm today (9/28/17) to discuss our potential solutions to get his feedback and any further insight he has to share.
This past week we have put a lot of effort into developing our need statement and project scope. We met with Brad Postier on Friday (9/15/17) to discuss in more detail the specifications of the project. He gave us lots of specifications and a better sense of what he wants this artificial breathing device to include. Some of the major points of discussion and considerations for the project include:
The grading came back as a 4 on our need statement and project scope, we could probably improve by clearly defining the outcome of our device and what will specifically be delivered at the end of next semester.
Moving forward, our group plans to meet and discuss potential solutions and to generate our pugh charts. Furthermore, we are going to come up with our top five solutions to present to Dr. Postier by 9/29/17. He has also asked us to look into the potential costs of our solutions in order to give him a better estimate of the costs that need to be covered, so we will also present him with these numbers. We are hoping that as we brainstorm and meet it will help us start and develop our preliminary report.
We are also wanting to ask if it is still possible to get the Tech Shop Certificate/Access? We are thinking that we will be needing to use the 3D printers. Please let us know what you need from us in order to get the Tech Shop access.
As we have discussed in our emails our team includes Nick Kasparie, Taylor Pemberton, and Cassie Davis.
Our group is going to work with Brad Postier from Spectrum Perception and NED. Dr. Postier has developed nasal inserts to help with snoring and has expressed a need to develop an artificial breathing device to test these devices. It needs to be able to test the effectiveness of the device either in the development, or for quality control of current designs during production. Furthermore, this device needs a device to test them which would include something which replicates natural and unnatural breathing patterns (for patients with sleep apnea, for example) and senses values such as pressure differences. Testing the devices now currently involves conscious breathing which isn't a perfect analog for sleeping patients, and this device would give more control for testing and could potentially be used for testing other respiratory devices.
We are planning on meeting with Dr. Postier this afternoon to discuss more details about the specifications of the device and to solidify the exact need. We have prepared several of the charts discussed in class and have them ready to take notes when we meet with him.