Construction
Construction Overview
TCoMS is made of 3 subassemblies and 23 individual parts. The majority of the parts used in the making of TCoMS will be ordered from online suppliers. The rest of the parts will be manufactured using 3D printing or by cutting pieces off of a sourced material. All assembly will be done in-house.
This project will be constructed in three phases:
1. Circuit Prototyping and 3D Printing
2. Coding Finalization
3. Final Assembly
After these three phases, the device will go through testing and updating of the code to ensure TCoMS meets the project requirements.
Expected Manufacturing Issues
-
Failed 3D prints
-
Soldering mistakes
-
Ordered parts DOA or malfunctioning
Mitigation methods are outlined in the construction section of the engineering report.
Construction Image Gallery
Click on an image to see details about the image.
Construction Video Overview
Experienced Manufacturing Issues
These issues either cropped up during construction or during testing.
3D Printing
-
An issue was found prior to printing where the print bed size was less than the size of the housing for TCoMS. This was fixed by turning the housing into two separate parts which were then joined and glued together using a dovetail joint.
-
Shrinkage of a part for the pokers and the probes was also an issue, the hole into which rods were to be inserted had become too small after printing. This was fixed by printing a new part with a 10% increase in size of the holes.
Programming
-
It was found that TCoMS couldn't be made to operate on solely an internal power source such as a 9 [V] battery as originally planned. The Arduino required power to be input via its USB connection so a powered USB port became a requirement to operate TCoMS. As these are readily available on computers and as phone charging hubs, this was left as is.
Soldering
-
Improper soldering caused the original LCD display to become non-functional. This required a replacement part to be bought.
Wiring
-
During device changes, an over voltage situation from the heating circuitry occurred causing damage to the analog sensing ability of the Arduino Due. As this was a requirement for the basic operation of TCoMS, a replacement board was purchased. Additionally, to prevent this issues from occurring again, a diode was added between the heating circuitry and the sensing components of TCoMS.
-
Thermal failure occurred in the thermistor bead of TCoMS' probe. This occurred after the primary testing had concluded, so this was not deemed to be an issue to be resolved due to time constraints. This is possible to fix and render TCoMS operational again, but any further testing should analyze this further.