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ChemArt Ornament Stringing Device
Get PDFChemArt is an ornament manufacturer for high quality ornaments used for fund raisers and special events. The companies busiest time of the year is around the holiday season, in which the White House Historical Association is their most prevalent production run. Team 7 was assigned a challenge by ChemArt to improve upon the current ornament tying process. Currently, the company uses manual labor in order to string and tie the ornaments right before they are packaged for sale. ChemArt would like to raise production without raising unit price. To do this the team was assigned with making a mechanism, whether it be fully autonomous, semi-autonomous, or completely manual that will increase the production rate. The team chose a semi-autonomous system, in which the first step in the tying process is done automatically, while the knotting process is then done by hand. Since inserting the string into the small ornament hole is the costliest step, this is the one the team focused upon. The design of this system revolves around a robotic arm and a rail system which combine to maneuver and string the ornament. The robotic arm is moved around with a suction cup attached to the end of it to pick and place the ornament. It starts by picking up an ornament directly from the previous step in the manufacturing process and placing it into a mount which is located under a pneumatic cylinder that punches the ribbon through the ornament hole. Before the ornament it moved into position a pneumatic gripper moves on a rail system powered by a stepper motor to pull the ribbon across. Once the ribbon and ornament are in place the ribbon is pushed through the ornament hole by one cylinder and it is cut by another. The combination of pneumatic and stepper motor inputs is controlled by an Arduino timing the systems actions. The Arduino code was developed through the course of the semester to be able to control all inputs in sync. Once the ornament is strung it will be placed upon another turn table where the tying process can be completed by hand
The Pod Rod
Get PDFThrough the filtration process used in Amgen, pods are used to filter out cell particles and extract the protein. These filter pods are disposed of after every filtration process, and the disposal process can take a long time. Employees currently must remove filter pods manually from unsafe heights, which could potentially cause issues. Along with the unsafe heights, the filters weigh around 30 pounds when soiled and two employees currently remove 30 pods per rack with 5 racks in the centrifuge room. Pods are removed one-by-one from multiple levels and placed into a trash bin, which is then wheeled to a disposal area. Since these pods are bulky and heavy, this can cause ergonomic issues for employees, putting strain on their arms and backs and creating an unsafe working environment.
The objective of this project is to help reduce the ergonomic stress put on employees while making the pod removal process more efficient and fitting within the constraints of the facility. To solve this issue, this team first designed a mechanism that would fit within the rack itself and lift the pods up above the level of the side tension rods. This allowed the pods to be slid onto a separate Removal Rack. This design proved to be very costly and complicated to implement so the team designed another simpler solution. The final design was a removable bar to alleviate strain from employees and speed up the pod loading and removal process. The removable bar directly replaced the current unremovable side tensile rod. The implementation of the removeable bar removes the need for employees to lift the 30-pound pods up over the bar. Instead, the pods can be pulled out with minimal lifting, decreasing the ergonomic stress while not drastically changing the current process employees have become familiar with.
The team accomplished a final machined device capable of being fit into the current Amgen rack configuration. The team also completed engineering analysis as well as tensile testing to ensure the design would be able to withstand the load applied. For the engineering analysis, the calculations were done on this concept in order to prove the effectiveness and safety using SolidWorks, MATLAB, Excel, and by hand. As for the tensile testing a modified testing specimen was manufactured and tested to the maximum load 14 consecutive times, recording the displacement each time. This concept also fits within other constraining factors such as cleanability and fitting in the tight dimensions of the cleanroom. This was accomplished by prioritizing safety and size.
Overall, after moving on from the initial Pod Puller concept the team focused on simplicity. This resulted in the final Pod Rod concept, a simple and easy to use replacement to the side tension rods of the pod racks. The team was able to install The Pod Rod on an Amgen rack and gather feedback from various Amgen employees. The overall feedback was very positive, and the team has handed off the concept to Amgen to further develop to fit their needs
Assessment of Urban Water-Energy Interactions and Heat Island Signatures in Rhode Island
No full textRhode Island is the smallest and the second-most densely populated state in the USA. It is also one of the most severely affected states on the Eastern Seaboard due to Climate Change. While Rhode Island residents pay some of the highest energy prices in the country, its less resourceful suburban residents around the capital city, Providence, are exposed to harmful heat island effects during the summer months. As water and wastewater utility operators are often the largest energy consumers in American municipalities, water, and energy consumption exhibit directly evident connections in urban environments. In this study, we employ an Urban-Water-Energy (UWE)-Nexus approach to understand water and energy demand and their interactions in both space and time for Rhode Island; we quantify the extent and exposure of the Urban Heat Island effects among its towns and urban populations using high-resolution details
Electrostatic Repulsion Slows Relaxations of Polyelectrolytes in Semidilute Solutions
No full textWe investigate the structure and dynamics of unentangled semidilute solutions of sodium polystyrenesulfonate (NaPSS) using small-angle neutron scattering (SANS) and neutron spin-echo (NSE) spectroscopy. The effects of electrostatic interactions and chain structure are examined as a function of ionic strength and polymer concentration, respectively. The SANS profiles exhibit a characteristic structural peak, signature of polyelectrolyte solutions, that can be fit with a combination of a semiflexible chain with excluded volume interactions form factor and a polymer reference interaction site model (PRISM) structure factor. We confirm that electrostatic interactions vary with ionic strength across solutions with similar geometries. The segmental relaxations from NSE deviate from theoretical predictions from Zimm and exhibit two scaling behaviors, with the crossover between the two regimes taking place around the characteristic structural peak. The chain dynamics are suppressed across the length scale of the correlation blob, and inversely related to the structure factor. These observations suggest that the highly correlated nature of polyelectrolytes presents an additional energy barrier that leads to de Gennes narrowing behavior
Facilitating Climate Change Action in the Ocean Sciences Using the Interactive Computer Model En-ROADS
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The Penn Effect and Marx\u27s International Law of Value: A Review of Value and Unequal Exchange by Andrea Ricci
Get PDFPlacing itself in the revival of interest in unequal exchange, Ricci\u27s book claims the need to give the theory a new conceptual foundation to justify recent proposals to estimate unequal exchange on the basis of the so-called Penn effect. In order to do that, Ricci identifies Marx\u27s international law of value as a fitting theoretical framework and hence develops a radically innovative theory of global capitalist exploitation through international trade. Finally, he assesses the magnitude of unequal exchange over the past three decades by producing estimates based on the proposed approach
Making in media education: An activity-oriented approach to digital literacy
Get PDFWhy is maker education a suitable approach for giving learners the 21st century skills they need to cope with the digital transformation? This article provides an answer and represents a defense of maker education in the field of educational science. Taking a human-media-machine interaction model as the basis for discussion, this article highlights the growing importance of digital technology as well as technological principles for human communication and interaction. Communication technology and the influence of technology on culture and society require a broad understanding of media literacy in the sense of digital literacy. By broadening the theoretical basis of media literacy education, making, coding and tinkering qualify as approaches for achieving these goals. The discussion uses the four classic dimensions of media literacy and action theory to argue in favor of these approaches
Book review: Developing digital detectives: Essential lessons for discerning fact from fiction in the ‘Fake News’ Era
Get PDFWhose policy is it anyway? Public support for clean energy policy depends on the message and the messenger
Get PDFEnvironmental policy advocates are increasingly proposing ‘bundled’ clean energy policies to combat climate change while also creating jobs and transforming the economy. While such strategies may broaden the appeal of climate policies, these broad constituencies create challenges for policy communicators – how do messages about different aspects of the policy, coming from different messenger groups, influence public support for clean energy policies? This study uses a modified conjoint survey experiment (n = 2145) to test how the interaction between message frames (addressing climate change vs. creating jobs) and sources (business, environmental, or labor groups) influenced policy support for clean energy policies. Results show that job creation frames from business or environmental groups were most effective. We find evidence that certain message/source combinations work across partisanship divides: messages that were effective for one partisan group did not backfire – and often also increased policy support – when presented to the other group