This week, most of our magnetic stirring mechanism was completed. The specifications for the cooling fans to run were ascertained to be 5V, 3A. Then, the wires for the fans were soldered together such that they were connected in parallel, and a USB cable output was fitted to the fan circuit, such that the setup could be plugged into a power bank rather than a wall socket.
To attach our fans in the correct orientation with respect to the beakers, a thin panel was printed with 4 2.5mm holes corresponding to the 4 2.5mm holes at the 4 corners of each of the 6 fans. These fans were then screwed on using M2 screws and nuts. This panel was then placed below our base, directly under the beakers.

In terms of our slider, the print modeled the previous week for the slider was found to be weak, as the plastic 3D printed rods snapped off easily. Thus, to support the structure, two aluminum rods were taken from Wonyeong’s archery arrows to be used.

The rods were measured to be of diameter of 7.1 mm and of length of 11.7 cm, which appeared to be adequately stable for the setup. However, for our stepper motor, the side rods could only be a maximum of 4 mm wide in diameter. Thus, we needed to secure two 0.5 cm thick 3D printed panels to the top and bottom of our stepper motor, screwed on using M5 screws. These extension pieces were designed to be 4 cm from the box for both rods (white). They were then held down to our motor with another piece (red), screwed down using M2 screws. These ended up fitting, and we plan to start testing the slider with the stepper motor and pipette next week.