Now that we knew that the flow system and slow cooling are factors that play a part in obtaining clear ice, it was time to start modelling our final prototype. There were a lot of things that we had to consider while planning for our design: how to position each component, dimensions of each component, how to make it space efficient, separate electronics from water, etc.

We first made a rough sketch of where we thing we should position our components and then began to estimate the size of each item. We already had sizes of a few components fixed from the start (eg. the ice mold), which helped in allocating dimensions of other items as well. Keeping all this in mind, we ended up with the following messy drawing, indistinguishable, I know.

Now that we roughly knew what to model, we distributed the work amongst ourselves (Clarice and Shuchi) and hence started modelling on Solidworks. Though 3D modelling is time taking, it is really helpful as it highlights things we overlooked/didn’t consider (things like how screws might interfere with components, etc.).