Task to be carried out this week

Individual Assignment

1. What tasks have been completed, and what tasks remain?
2. What's working? what's not?
3. What questions need to be resolved?
4. What will happen when?
5. What have you learned?

Action Plan

What tasks have been completed, and what tasks remain?

Tasks Completed:
• Making the Kiln Body. The detailed documentation can be found here: project2.html
• The programming Code for the operation of the kiln. Click to download programming file
• Design of the Controller board. Click to download schematic and board diagram of controller board
• Milling and soldering of controller board
• Design of controller box. Click to download the controller box design file
• 3D printing of controller box
• Design of kiln table Click to download design file for the table
• Testing the program
• Making the presentation slide

Tasks yet to be completed;
• Final Assembly of the components
• Casting the Lid for the Kiln
• Electrical connections
• Making the presentation video

What's working? what's not?

So for the initial testing the following parts of the system are working;

The electroinic/controller board is working fine

The arduino program for the project is working perfectly. I tested the program to check if the temperature can be maintained and its working fine. The test can be seen in the video below;

The Kiln table came out quite strong to be able to carry the kiln body

Though the programme and the electronic board are working quite fine, when the final assembly was made, a couple of things didn't work The things that aren't working are as follows;

I had connected the wires serially which causes more resistance. Thus the coil didn't get heated up to optimum temperature I wanted.

I had used 3 coils (1 meter each) in the kiln, which required more current than that was available. It required 32Amps of current while the current in household sockets is only 16Amps. So the MCB kept turning down

what questions need to be resolved?

Since I faced a alot of drawbacks during my testing phase after assembly, I had to make a lot of changes. The following tasks had to be carried out to resolve the issues faced;

The very first thing I need to do is disconnect all the electrical connections and start calculating the no. of coils I can use for the current and power available at lab

I also need to do was change my entire electrical connection. Initially, I had connected the heating coild in series. I need to change the connection to parallel.

Next I need to test if the parallelly connected wires are getting heated enough.

I then need to drill additional holes on the kiln body to make the new connection.

The final task is to test if its working or not.

what will happen when?

I kept a day for making the changes in connection and an additional day to ensure all the things are working and to take the final working shot.

what have you learned?

Fab Academy has been one of the most intensive but interesting teaining course I have taken till date. I had the opportunity to meet a lot of like-minded people and the chance to learn well-learned fab gurus and instructors. Fab Academy broadened my spectrum of knowledge and opened a lot of new opportunities and platforms for me to learn from. Aside from the technical knowledge I also learned about time management and project management in Fab Academy.
Fab Academy also rekindled my love for programming. I had lost touch with it over the course of my work period and being reintroduced to in in a much more fun way had made me love it even more.
Electronics was a very new concept for me and I never knew I would love it till I tried it in Fab Academy. I had been introduced to my artistic part during the designing weeks and I never knew I would do carpentry till I tried it.
In summary the things I learned from the last 18 weeks of Fab Academy are as follows;

Designing Tools: 2D and 3D design tool such as GIMP, INkscape, Blender and Fusion 360. I would not have even known these tools existed had it not been for Fab Academy

Electronic Design and electronic production.
If someone told me that I would be making controller boards 7 months ago, I would would have thought it was impossible. But guess what, I can do it now thanks to Fab Academy

Machine operation: One of the most fun part of the whole academy session was learning about new machines each week and being able to operate them

Image and Video Editing: Fab Academy introduced to my inner protographer and videographer.

interfacing and application development

All in all, there were a lot of take aways from Fab Academy and with the launch of a Fab Lab in my work place, I plan to keep learning and growing.