2019 Winter: Finished Test Rigs (pt. 2) and Next Steps

Hi, Allison again, in a continuous recollection of our Winter 2019 Design work thus far!

On The Last Episode of the BLUElab Thailand Blog…

Our 2 Design Sub-teams (drainage, catchbasins vs. debris, pipes) spent most of last semester aiming to model the Mae Chan drainage catch-basin and pipes into test rigs that would allow us to model these:

Into these:

Until Materials research and shopping yielded our new designs:

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Now onto the building…

And two days later, two test rigs were complete!

However, their ultimate fidelity lies in how compatible they are with our testing procedures, such as their capacity to hold compacted dirt and withstand high water pressures. In order to simulate these, a necessary requisite for our test-rigs are their portability to different testing sites without compromising durability.

We decided to test just this by transporting them from North Campus to Central Campus for BLUElab’s Socially Engaged Design Showcase. Our test rigs proved to be adequately detachable (due to debris’ screw design and drainage’s collapsable buckets) and transportable!

As we near February and conclude our Test Rig project, it is imperative to start thinking to the future. With the test rigs, we now have a means to assess and simulate future prototypes centered around our initial goals (see Fall blog):

(1) Iterate upon our prototype for Need 2 (2) Generate a new prototype for Need 1 (3) Construct a test rig of the Mae Chan drainage system to test our prototypes.

With under 3 months to do advance those three objectives, we envision the following timeline:

Both design sub-teams have already delved into conducting Existing Technology Reviews, this time for existing tools and methods. We will transition into Concept Generation/Development/Selection stages of the Design Phase soon, and will be prototyping and manufacturing when ready. We hope for more expert guidance and socially-engaged instruction on how to translate our data and ideas into community-appropriate prototypes in the summer.

As we prepare for summer travel, we begin to interact closer to PURPLElab, our student partners over at Chiang Mai University. This means introductions, video calls and our deliberate decisions on sending travelers. As we select travelers, we also begin THAI LANGUAGE AND CULTURE lessons!

Our team is hard at work to propel our continuous learning and design initiatives, and cannot wait to connect with our community and University partners in Thailand. Thank you for following along our journey thus far, and do give our Facebook/Instagram a follow to check how we’re doing!

See ya next time!

-Allison