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Full-Text Articles in Engineering

Open Source Low-Cost Power Monitoring System, Shane W. Oberloier, Joshua M. Pearce Oct 2018

Open Source Low-Cost Power Monitoring System, Shane W. Oberloier, Joshua M. Pearce

Department of Materials Science and Engineering Publications

This study presents an entirely open-source, low-cost power monitoring system capable of many types of measurements including both loads and supplies such as solar photovoltaic systems. In addition, the system can be fabricated using only open source software and hardware. The design revolves around the Digital Universal Energy Logger (DUEL) Node, which is responsible for reading and properly scaling the voltage and current of a particular load, and then serializing it via an on-board ATTiny85 chip. The configuration of the DUEL node allows for custom sensitivity ranges, and can handle up to 50 A and 300 V. Up to 127 …


Belt-Driven Open Source Circuit Mill Using Low-Cost 3-D Printer Components, Shane W. Oberloier, Joshua M. Pearce Sep 2018

Belt-Driven Open Source Circuit Mill Using Low-Cost 3-D Printer Components, Shane W. Oberloier, Joshua M. Pearce

Department of Materials Science and Engineering Publications

Barriers to inventing electronic devices involve challenges of iterating electronic designs due to long lead times for professional circuit board milling or high costs of commercial milling machines. To overcome these barriers, this study provides open source (OS) designs for a low-cost circuit milling machine. First, design modifications for mechanical and electrical subsystems of the OS Distributed 3-D (D3D) Robotics prototyping system are provided. Next, Copper Carve, an OS custom graphical user interface, is developed to enable circuit board milling by implementing backlash and substrate distortion compensation. The performance of the OS D3D circuit mill is then quantified and validated …


Fused Particle Fabrication 3-D Printing: Recycled Materials’ Optimization And Mechanical Properties, Aubrey Woern, Dennis Byard, Robert B. Oakley, Matthew J. Fiedler, Samantha Snabes, Joshua M. Pearce Aug 2018

Fused Particle Fabrication 3-D Printing: Recycled Materials’ Optimization And Mechanical Properties, Aubrey Woern, Dennis Byard, Robert B. Oakley, Matthew J. Fiedler, Samantha Snabes, Joshua M. Pearce

Department of Materials Science and Engineering Publications

Fused particle fabrication (FPF) (or fused granular fabrication (FGF)) has potential for increasing recycled polymers in 3-D printing. Here, the open source Gigabot X is used to develop a new method to optimize FPF/FGF for recycled materials. Virgin polylactic acid (PLA) pellets and prints were analyzed and were then compared to four recycled polymers including the two most popular printing materials (PLA and acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS)) as well as the two most common waste plastics (polyethylene terephthalate (PET) and polypropylene (PP)). The size characteristics of the various materials were quantified using digital image processing. Then, power and nozzle velocity …


Self-Sufficiency Of 3-D Printers: Utilizing Stand-Alone Solar Photovoltaic Power Systems, Khalid Yousuf Khan, Lucia Gauchia, Joshua M. Pearce May 2018

Self-Sufficiency Of 3-D Printers: Utilizing Stand-Alone Solar Photovoltaic Power Systems, Khalid Yousuf Khan, Lucia Gauchia, Joshua M. Pearce

Department of Materials Science and Engineering Publications

A self-replicating rapid prototyper (RepRap) is a type of 3-D printer capable of printing many of its own components in addition to a wide assortment of products from high-value scientific or medical tools to household products and toys. There is some evidence that these printers could provide low-cost distributed manufacturing in underprivileged rural areas. For the most isolated communities without access to the electric grid, a low-cost alternative energy is needed. Solar energy can be harvested through a stand-alone photovoltaic (PV) power system specifically designed to match the needs of the RepRap. The voltage and current requirement for the printer …


Design Optimization Of Polymer Heat Exchanger For Automated Household-Scale Solar Water Pasteurizer, David C. Denkenberger, Joshua M. Pearce Apr 2018

Design Optimization Of Polymer Heat Exchanger For Automated Household-Scale Solar Water Pasteurizer, David C. Denkenberger, Joshua M. Pearce

Department of Materials Science and Engineering Publications

A promising approach to reducing the >870,000 deaths/year globally from unsafe water is flow-through solar water pasteurization systems (SWPs). Unfortunately, demonstrated systems have high capital costs, which limits access for the poor. The most expensive component of such systems is the heat exchanger (HX). Thus, this study focuses on cost optimization of HX designs for flow-through SWPs using high-effectiveness polymer microchannel HXs. The theoretical foundation for the cost optimization of a polymer microchannel HX is provided, and outputs are plotted in order to provide guidelines for designers to perform HX optimizations. These plots are used in two case studies: (1) …