Collaborative Learning

Our group is made up of students of different majors – an E2S2 student, a Mathematics student, a Computer Science student, an aerospace engineering student, and a Chemistry student. Furthermore, we have been working with our friendly and helpful MnT Lab personnel, who are trained engineers in their own fields.

Prior to this project, we had been doing project focused on our respective fields and rarely having been exposed to an interdisciplinary project like this one. Through discussions and weighing each person’s concerns and opinions out carefully before proceeding with the project, we were able to come up with a plan that has allowed our project to move extremely fast over the past week.

 

The Importance of Communication

During the course of the project, there were many times when different members of the group have competing ideas and vision on how the project should pan out. An important learning point is that learning to hear each other out and engage in civil discussion is as important as getting the point across. Through healthy discussions, this facilitates the understanding of each other’s opinion and enables a compromise to be reached. Win-win!

 

Designing 3D Printed Objects

We revised the design of a couple 3d printed items. Here, we’ll talk about two mounts – one for the stopcock of the burette, and one for the arducam attached to the actuator.

Due to the complicated shape of the burette stopcock, it was difficult to design a connecter between the stopcock and the stepper motor. Below are some versions that weren’t working.

Through trial and error, we ended up designing some versions that fit very well, as shown below.

 

The first version mount attaching the arducam to the actuator broke due to the weight disparity between the two objects.

Some revisions made to the design were: 1) a thicker base that was filleted for a less vulnerable breakpoint and 2) thicker rods.

 

OpenCV

Prior to this, we had only learned how to use Python. OpenCV played an integral part in our prototype, due to the large dependence on computer vision techniques used to convert between colour channels and detect specific colours to determine the start and end volume for titration. We also experimented with various background subtractor technique to detect motion to calculate volume changes as well as different types of blurring techniques to reduce background noises in our initial prototype design.