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Frugal Clay Press For Nicaragua: Design Of A Human-Powered Clay Brick Press For Rural Application, Rafael Delfin C. Guerrero, Milan O. Copic, Kevin A. Ellis, L. Isaac Marcia
Frugal Clay Press For Nicaragua: Design Of A Human-Powered Clay Brick Press For Rural Application, Rafael Delfin C. Guerrero, Milan O. Copic, Kevin A. Ellis, L. Isaac Marcia
Mechanical Engineering Senior Theses
This team was connected to a brick-making social entrepreneurship in Ciudad Darío, Nicaragua. Travel to Nicaragua in March of 2018 determined that the entrepreneurship wanted a manual brick press to increase the mechanical properties of bricks while decreasing the time needed for the bricks to dry before being baked. Fabrication of a semi-functional beta prototype was completed in May of 2018. Prototype operational tests showed that one cycle of brick compression and retrieval took roughly 3.5 minutes to produce a single double-sized brick. Water absorptivity tests determined that compressed bricks of red art clay experienced a percent absorptivity of 20.5%, …