Tim Describing the system and how it works

One Last Thing...

Here's the link to the Beaumont Enterprise Newspaper article that was written about our project.

Feel free to check it out.

http://www.beaumontenterprise.com/news/local/lamar_team_builds_lunar_space_washer.html

Well... That's it for us...

Okay, so....

The Launderers have graduated. We're super happy that we were able to work on this project. It was, by far, the pinnacle of our collegiate career, and we're happy that we were able to work together.

We're leaving our followers with these last pictures of our final design and a link to the news paper article that was written about us.

The Beaumont Enterprise came by and interviewed us on Wednesday, May 19th, and the story ran today on the Front Page. We were very happy with everything, and this article was a great way to close out the project.

Here's the link, and the last few pictures are above.

http://www.beaumontenterprise.com/news/local/lamar_team_builds_lunar_space_washer.html

Thanks for following us. We had a blast.

~The Lamar Launderers

Showcase Pics

Since the Showcase:

Alright, since the showcase, we've kept pretty busy.

After wasting too much time preparing for the Fundamentals of Engineering exam 2 weeks ago, we got back to our testing.

We were always a little nervous about how our urethane drum was always pinched between the agitator arms and the press mechanism, so we took the machine apart (again) and cut the press down to a less stressful shape. We were really pleased with the results, as it still gives beautifully distributed pressure across the drum, without the annoying pinching and stretching side-effects.

With the press re-shaped, it was time to get down to business and really get to testing. We threw in about 15 articles of clothing (10 good-sized towels and 5 T-shirts) and got to washing. We adjusted agitator timers, got the press to push farther than it ever had, and were finally satisfied with what we had.

Everything worked great. We were super happy.

Now it was time to see how well we could get rid of stains. Dr. Jim Jordan of the geology department at Lamar University VERY graciously donated some Lunar Soil Simulant for our testing purposes. We bough some cheap white T-shirts and went to town. We stained them with ketchup, mustard, coffee, tomato sauce, and both wet and dry lunar soil simulant.

We washed everything with five minute agitation cycles and a completely full load. Things went really well, up until the very last rinse cycle...

Our motor was set to go... but instead of pushing the paddle forward, the machine just made a loud klunking noise and shut itself off.

We froze, paranoid about what would happen next.

We unplugged the machine, checked everything out and decided to plug it back in.

Nothing happened.

Tim unplugged it, and a huge spark nearly took off his eyebrows...

Turns out we fried one of our relays. The control relays we were using simply weren't rated for motor applications. So we bought some new ones. They'll be in by Monday, we'll re-wire everything and go to town again.

Believe it or not, things are still looking up. We've got NASA Engineers coming to see the design on Wednesday, when we present to all our Lamar faculty and peers. It should make for some good times.

Thanks for sticking with us... We have some new photos from the showcase (thanks to Tim's wife, Maria) that we're about to upload.

~The Lamar Launderers.

Success Beyond Belief

Well, we did it.

We finally washed some clothes last night, Tuesday, April 20th, and it was glorious.

But it taught us that we had a few more finishing touches to do.... Added weight from the water and clothes cause the entire cam system to sag, so we are having new cam support rollers machined today. Our Expansion chamber takes on far too much water, so we'll re-plumb that.
And arguably the worst of all, our press pinches the bag far too much...

So tonight, we worked pretty hard, removing the back plate of the Washer (hopefully for the last time!) and cut off nearly a third of the press paddle, and now it works beautifully. We are very excited to get the clothing and water back in the system, and really measure how well it washes.

We think we've figured out a way to quantify how clean the clothes are, by measuring both the particles of dirt/soilage per given area and the color of the stain, using some kind of digitized color profile. It should be more exciting than it sounds.

The real news tonight is that we have videos!
We've got 3 videos, all showing basically the same thing, but have a look and enjoy. We hope you're as proud of it as we are.

Thanks for your support,

~The Launderers.

Pictures are coming soon, we promise!

We've been pretty busy with the Fundamentals of Engineering Exam this past weekend, but we'll pick back up where we left off early this week.

We'll finally have pictures of the completed design, a video of the design in action, and some test data that we'd love to share with everyone.

We're looking forward to keeping everyone updated, so just hang on a bit longer.

~The Lamar Launderers.

Showcase Success!

After a lot of hard work (and more nights working past 3 a.m. than we'd like to remember), the Lamar Launderers were able to complete their prototype!

With mechanical and electrical systems (finally) working flawlessly, we were able to perform rudimentary tests, only to find that our solenoid valves were improper for our application.

This having been said, we were still able to present at the TSGC Design showcase yesterday, Monday, April 12th, and demonstrate the agitation and press method that the design uses.

Everything went off without a hitch. Judges and spectators (as well as a few rival teams) were blown away by the working prototype. The awards that our hard work earned for us are listed below:

-Best Team
-Forum Favorite Team
-Best Poster
-Best Model
-Best Oral Presentation
-Best Paper
-Best Patch
-Best Collaboration (with over 9 distributors and suppliers)
-Best photo documentation (semester II team)
-Best photo of a team member on the verge (for the picture of our contributor, Colby Henslee with our drum mold on his head)
-Best rendition of an old tradition (for our reinstatement of the Lamar tradition to forget about Tuesday Tag Ups until Wednesday morning, thus making Wednesday Whazzups)

This means we won 11 1st place prizes out of a possible 33 categories.

We would just like to thank anyone and everyone that helped make our success possible, including
Jason Blake, Aaron Chinn, and Teddy Weitzel from Sage Automation for all their assistance
Steve Ingraham from I-Corp Inc. for helping us with manufactured parts
Cecil Brandon from Advanced Urethane Products Inc for our urethane drum
Dr. Chu and Dr. Aung from Lamar University for all their support
DXP enterprises for their donations
Allen-Bradley and Reynolds Electric Company for providing us with parts at cost prices
TSGC Coordinator Debbie Mullins, who is always a pleasure to work with
and finally our NASA JSC Mentor, Evelyne Orndoff, who submitted this project for study and supported our team throughout all of our work.

We got our Cam Moving today!

After doing a quick test on the motors, we worked pretty hard today trying to get the belt properly situated around the cam. With everything in place, we tried the unthinkable and turned on the motor, and to our delight, the cam moved perfectly. It was great to see moving parts on our design. Everything's really coming together.

We'll be posting more pictures and maybe a few videos in the next few days.

~The Launderers.

Fasteners Fasteners Fasteners...

Does anyone know how to upload more than 5 pictures at a time?

We've been wicked busy lately with all of our new parts. There's been a lot of prefabrication work to do, and we've made some great headway on our assembly. Pictures are worth more than words, so see for yourself.