Create a new ultralightweight hopper together with a simple delivery mechanism that removes small, measured quantities of powder from the hopper and dispenses them onto each plant.12V DC power source is available at the relay that makes the dispenser work.The hopper holds at most 200 g of powder at a time.The size of the particles is 80120 nm.The particles have a density of 3.4 gcm3 with a void fraction of 15%.The amount dispensed per tree will range from 20200 mg.The minimum sample dispensing resolution is 2 mg.
Design a Nano powder Delivery Mechanism with Mass or Volume Controls for Fertilizing Plants from a Drone EMS5AM Group 15 Abhilash Sharma (20517877) Nirav Patel (20593344) Abhilash Sharma (20517877) Introduction The framing is the very physical intensive work, it requires lot work like carrying heavy fertilizer bags, walking in the whole for distribution, watering them, so to make the lot of the work easy for the framer and implementing technology to minimize the physical work One of such applications would be using the drones for the delivery of the fertilizers and the pesticide this way it will eliminate the task of going to the individual plant and distributing the fertilizer or the pesticides, this will not only minimize the physical work but also save huge amounts of time Using drones for have such applications make tasks easier but there are many problem which are needed to be addressed for such implementations lets go through it point by point Drones must be light so they limit the amount of weight they can carry The amount of fertilizers, pesticides, and seeds varies from plants size, growth and type The material use should be able to withstand the various weather conditions The material should be able to keep moisture out of the payload The material should not react with the payload The dispense of the payload should be controlled This list shows the main problem associated with technical implementation but there are furthermore problems associated with the implementation regarding regulations, learning curve, pricing and availability excreta This report incorporates designing of the dispense mechanism and hopper which will contain the fertilizer The aim here is to design a hopper and dispense mechanism for the delivery of the special fertilizer, the drone should be able to dispense the fertilizer to the macadamia nuts tree in the orchard Boundary conditions The drone is going to deliver the special kind of fertilizer, which is in the form of the powder, the delivery of the fertilizer should in precise quantities As the different size of trees required different amount of fertilizer so the dispense mechanism should be designed in such a way that it could dispense the powder in multiple quantities One of the main things which should be considered while designing the container is the material of the container as the powder is need to kept dry before dispensing, it important as the powder will start to form clumps due to the Van Der Waal force between the particles of the powder Powder specifications The size of the particles varies between 80-120 nm The density of the particles is 3.4 g/cm3 The particles have void fraction of 15% Container specifications It should have capacity of at least 200 g It should keep the powder dry The material of hopper should not react with the powder Dispenser specifications pg Minimum amount dispensable must be g It should be able to dispense between the range of 20 – 200 g It should be able to dispense about 200 grams in minutes Abhilash Sharma (20517877) Potential design solutions Design1 Figure potential design In this design the container is of the flask shape, as it has conical shape at the end it will help the power to move towards the opening with help of gravity and no other extra mechanism is required, and at the end it will have the guided rails, on that guided rails the dispense mechanism will move The dispense mechanism is made of a cylinder which has the valve at the end The valve will open when the cylinder will move to right thus sealing the container opening and when will move back to the initial position closing the valve and opening the container This is the simple valve mechanism but the problem with this approach is that it can only dispense the fixed amount of powder which doesn’t full fill the requirements of variation in the quantity So, this design fails the criteria Design2 Figure potential design In this design also the container is of the flask shape as it full fills the design criteria, in the dispense mechanism is such which is mostly used in saltshaker There are two lid one which is connected to the end of the container and another one lid is mounted over that both have the fixed opening Now to get the variation is the dispensing the outer lid will rotate thus giving the variable openings for the dispensing, this qualify the both aspects of container and dispense mechanism But this design is incomplete because the powder tends to have Van Der Waal effect due to which the particles of the powder will stick together and will form lump which can make dispensing of the powder difficult pg Abhilash Sharma (20517877) Selected design Figure final design The final design is the modified or optimized version of the potential design as the potential designs qualifies the both aspects of the container and the dispense mechanism but it doesn’t solve the issue for the dealing with Van Der Waal effect of the power so after the lots of research and brainstorming it was decided to add the vibrator to the hopper, due to the vibration the particles will be detached from each other and will also help them to decent towards the container opening, another solution for handling this to add an shaft with the spiral wings which while rotating will push the particles downwards and not letting particle stick to each other and form lump, but with the addition of shaft the more weight would be increased and the volume of the hopper will also decrease, which means to hold the 200g of the power the size of the container needs to increased which again will add more weight So, to minimize the weight and optimize the design adding a vibrator was selected for the final design Detailed description of design Container design Figure container The container should be able to hold the 200g, for that we need to find the volume of the 200g of the powder need to be stored the density of the particle is 3.4 g/cm3 and void fraction is 15% [1] So, density ρ= V / (1- void fraction) [2] [3] Now, ρ = 3.4{1-(15/100)} = 2.89 g/cm3 Now, to find the volume of 200g of the particle ρ c = m / V so, ρ c = 200 / 2.89 = 69.20415 g/cm3 Now, we have the volume for the particle on bases of this the dimensions of the container will be selected So, to find the volume of the container V c = V a + V b Here V a is volume of the cylinder and the V b is volume of the conical shape V a = πr2h, V b = (1/3) π (𝑟1 + 𝑟1𝑟2 + 𝑟2 ) Now, by putting value in above equation and doing iterations we can find the dimensions of container Which is H = 3cm, r = 3cm, r1= 3cm, r2 = 1cm, h = 1cm.Which gives V c = 70.12 cm3 and required was 69.20415 cm3 so this dimensions qualifies for design pg Nirav Patel (20593344) Dispense mechanics design Figure outer lid Figure container lid The dispense mechanism should be able to dispense from 20-200mg of the powder for that the mechanism is made up of the two lids one is the lid of the container which will we fixed and have a small circular opening which can be seen in figure above, the outer lid will also have the similar openings but this lid will be able to rotate which will change the size of the opening [4] For the radius of the circular opening, the maximum powder needs to be dispense is 200mg so the volume of opening is V o = 0.2g / 2.89 g/cm3 = 0.0692, now with this area can be calculated as V o = Ah and as the total thickness of lid is 2mm the height is 0.2cm thus the area is 0.346 by putting this value in Ah = π𝑟 ℎ we get value of r which is 0.33cm so to take the error in to accounts radius for the opening is taken as 0.4cm Part Name Container Container lid Outer lid Openings both Diameter 3cm, 1cm 1cm 1.4cm 0.8cm Height 4cm 0.1 0.1cm 0.1cm Thickness 0.2cm - Figure All dimensions Electrical equipment There is 12v power supply available for the equipment’s, it will used by the small motor and the vibrator The motor will rotate clockwise and anti-clockwise adjusting the dispense of the powder via control unit, which will also control the vibrator The particle of the powder will stick together and from lump due to the Van Der Waal force which will make it difficult to deliver the powder so prevent this from happening the vibrator will be connected to the outer portion of the container [5] Material selection Properties Tensile strength Elongation yield Density Unit MPa % g/mL Range 23.0-295 9-18 0.955-0.961 Figure HDPE properties [6] [7] Materials selected for the design HDPE, it is selected as the plastics is great from insulation and water resistant so it will keep the heat as well as moisture out of the powder which is essential part of the design [6] [8], as well as plastics is light in weight The HDPE is also selected due to is its strengths compare to other plastics and it can be recycled which also make design environment friendly [8] pg Nirav Patel (20593344) Manufacturing method For the manufacturing the additive manufacturing method will be used, the 3d printing will save the time and will decrease the number of parts as well There are many ways the this design can be manufactured, the first can be by creating the mold for design, in that manufacturing process there would be requirement for the three different mold one for the container one for the container lid and other for the outer lid, in this way the first process would be creation of mold which will have manufacturing process of its own, in this way it increases the manufacturing time by significant amount Also, the it makes the assembly process of the parts bit longer In addition to that the material is also wasted which makes the process less environment friendly Then there is subtractive manufacturing methods in which the block of material is taken and then with CNC machine the parts are manufactured by removing the material, this method is not useful for plastics as well as due to this lot of material is wasted, this manufacturing method is suited best for the metals and the designs which requires less number of parts so it does help provide us the solution for less number of parts which leads to less assembly time but as stated it waste lot of materials [8] Additive manufacturing, in this material is added layer by layer and the parts are manufactured, in this way the least amount of material is used and can also manufacture the most complex parts, due to which it decrease the time to assemble the parts as well add the great amount of the strength to the parts as lesser the joints lesser the weak points in the design, and the additive manufacturing is also the best for the recyclable materials so as design is based on the HDPE which is recyclable material so this manufacturing process is best choice for the design resulting in saving the time for assembly, reducing the required materials, and reducing the manufacturing time [9] [10] [11] The following are the step by step procedure for the manufacturing of the design Bills of materials The first step is the bill of materials this gives the details of which part requires what amount of material Parts Container Outer lid Vibrator Motor Unit spool Material HDPE Price 30$/kg 1 - 3$ 7$ Figure Bills of materials The material used it the HDPE filament spool which have the diameter of the 2mm and density of 0.953 g/cm3 Figure 10 HDPE filament spool [6] For the manufacturing of the parts FFF (Fused Filament Fabrication) method of 3D painting method will be used, there are few factors which are important to maintain while 3D printing of the HDPE as it have tendency to shrink while it cools down resulting in offsetting the layers So, to prevent that bedding should be made properly pg Nirav Patel (20593344) In this method for printing bed adhesion plastic bag stick glue and clamps will be used as shown in the image below Figure 11 bed adhesion settings [6] Now, other thing which matter is the height of the layers by 3D printer, the printer which will used for this manufacturing will be Flash Forge Creator Pro, this printer can print layers between range of 0.05mm to 0.4 mm Figure 12 3D printer [6] The smaller the layer height, higher the strength of the materials but it will also have less consistency, for this design consistency is important so the layer will be printed for 0.35mm and the temperature of the bed will be maintained between 180-250 degree for the better consistency quality of the print Assembly After the manufacturing of the parts the last step is to assemble all the part this design as has only two main parts so the assembly of the parts can be done with the hands The outer lid will be mounted on the lid of the container while aligning the openings Than the outer lid will be connected to the motor so that it can rotate and give the variable outings for the variable delivery of the powder, after that the vibrator will be attached to the container which will help the powder to prevent the Van Der Waal force effect This will end tha manufacturing process and the hopper will be manufactured and assembled completely Conclusion To conclude the report the design is made of main two parts one container and the outer lid, outer lid will be rotated with the help of the motor and the vibrator will be used for the preventing the Van Der Waal force between the particles the maximum amount which can be dispense will be 200mg, the precision of the dispense is given by the flow rate of the powder which can be calculated via m = ρ v A [12] where m is mass flow rate, ρ is density, v is velocity and A is cross sectional area So, the velocity of the material flow will be 0.6cm/s than it will able to dispense the 200mg under minutes which means the design qualifies all the conditions for design which state the design works and solves the problem pg Nirav Patel (20593344) References [1] JochemAlsenz, "PowderPicking: An inexpensive, manual, medium-throughput method for powder dispensing," vol 209, no 1-3, pp 152-157, 2011 [2] S.EickhoffabC.ZhangbT.Cui, "The effects of hydride chemistry, particle size, and void fraction on micro fuel cell performance," ELSEVIER, vol 243, pp 562-568, 2013 [3] C E A P M Moldestad, "Prediction of void fraction and minimumfluidization velocity of a binarymixture of particles: Bed material and fuel particles," Elsevier, vol 99, no 107, p 349, 2019 [4] "Patent Issued for Powder Dispensing Apparatus," Journal of Engineering, 2018 [5] B W N a V A PARSEGIAN, "VAN DER WAALS FORCES" [6] Z C F.Christ, "Printing polymer blends through in situ active mixing during fused filament fabrication," 2020 [7] , N A C S , a S S Samion Syahrullail, Advanced Research in Materials and Engineering Applications, 2015 [8] H I N O A W M Kahar, "Properties of HVA-2 Vulcanized High Density Polyethylene/Natural," journal of applied polymer science , 2012 [9] C Wampol, "Additive Manufacturing with High Density," South Dakota State University [10] L J K M P I Wimpenny, 3D Printing and Additive Manufacturing Technologies [11] S S B & R Goodridge, "Additive manufacturing," Materials Science and Technology, 2015 [12] H S ⇑, "Experimental investigation on mass flow rate measurements and feeding," Applied Thermal Engineering, vol 102, pp 30-37, 2016 pg ... lot of materials [8] Additive manufacturing, in this material is added layer by layer and the parts are manufactured, in this way the least amount of material is used and can also manufacture... fused filament fabrication," 2020 [7] , N A C S , a S S Samion Syahrullail, Advanced Research in Materials and Engineering Applications, 2015 [8] H I N O A W M Kahar, "Properties of HVA-2 Vulcanized... increased which again will add more weight So, to minimize the weight and optimize the design adding a vibrator was selected for the final design Detailed description of design Container design