While the controlling mechanism was being looked into, Deborah began designing the frame for the set-up. It seemed easy at first – all we needed was a box to hold everything together. But wait, the “box” needed to have good air flow, contain water for the hot reservoir and have a way for the user to change the water for maintenance, have an area for circuitry, separate the circuitry from the water for safety reasons, and the list goes on. It seemed daunting at first, and for the first few days, she spent time watching YouTube videos on how to use Fusion360, the software used to model 3D parts for printing. After a few rounds of discussion with the team about what set-up would be the best, we sent the model to the 3D printers to print!

 

Only to learn that the dimensions of the model were too big for the 3D printer to print. We decided to scale the prototype down to a miniature 1:10 model to see how the print would turn out. It was lucky that we did not waste time (and filament!) printing the model in its actual dimensions, as we realised that the model did not quite meet our requirements.

Pictures of our mini frame

Looking at the frame, we found out that the honeycomb structure was too small in comparison to the size of the model to allow for adequate air flow. The area for the water reservoir was also not suited for holding water because pieces printed by a 3D printer are not water-tight and thus we would need to coat the bottom layer and reservoir with silicon sealant. Changing the water for our set-up for user maintenance was also an issue as the model did not include a slanted base for easy water flow. It also did not adequately take into account how we were going to stopper the outlet flow.

After discussing with Qijie, we decided that we could either purchase a custom made acrylic box or redesign and reprint the frame as several smaller parts and then glue them together. With that, it was back to the drawing board to rethink how we wanted to print the frame to hold all our parts together.