Week 13

                                                                     Week 13

Operating Principles & Mechanism Designs

We're back with another week on our journey in the module of ICPD! We're now on to learning the operating principles as well as the mechanism designs! It might be a long and a dry content, but let's get into it!

Learning through the operating principles enables us to vision the devices, whether it is an apparatus or an equipment. They are designed on working principles that can be either mechanical, electrical chemical or even through magnetism. So, lets say we want to know how the principle how distillation works in a distillation column, we're talking about the differences in relative volatilities, as they are the factor in separating fluids with relatively higher boiling point than the other fluids.

So how about mechanism designs? In order for the identified operating principle to work efficiently, mechanical movements are often required. Mr Ting, who is our ICPD module lecturer provided us an example of a lady doing movements of her Lipton teabag in her drink. Curious to say, why is she playing with her drink? It was then where we come to know the principles in our that mechanism works. Stirring her Lipton teabag enables leeching from her tea leaf components in her tea bag to take place more efficiently, enabling the drink to be brewed quickly.

Mr Ting shared that the Mechanism consist of transformation of forced and movement into a desired set of output forces and movements. This means that any action of an energy is taken place, the desired energy is being released, like hitting a ball with your hand: The ball will travel due to kinetic energy produced from your hand. We also learnt the 6 essential mechanism in functional prototypes, consisting of actuators, cams, gears, lever, ratchets as well as springs. Using these mechanisms, what were they used to make a ping pong ball that shoots? Or even better, how are the ping pong balls reloaded after one is fired off?

With a 45 minute time at hand, we managed to recreate our own ping pong launcher from the diagram below.

And with that, this marks the end of Week 13! Hope you enjoy the blog so far. We'll see you again in Week 14!

About the Author: 

Willie Tan is the Team Leader that will be leading the team for Group 3 of "CP5065: Introduction the Chemical Product and Design"

Click here to view Willie's page: 

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