NICK WILLIAMS ENGINEERING AND DESIGN PORTFOLIO

2013

In a nutshell...
Bachelor of Aerospace Engineering (Hons) / Bachelor of Science 2010 2014 (Expected) Monash University, Melbourne, Australia High Distinction Average Engineering Excellence Scholarship Deans list in Science and Engineering Committee member, Monash Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering Club (MAMEC) President 2013 2014 Activities officer 2011 2013 Engineering Design internship with SlowCapital Winter 2013 Volunteer at Sacred Heart Mission St Kilda 2010 Ongoing Tutor and Presenter at Engage Education Foundation 2010 Ongoing Favourite Tools: Solidworks, MATLAB Clutch Pencil, Stanley Knife

Most of the design Ive done at university is highly technical and relates mostly to the aerospace field. (If you want to know what to build an aircraft radome out of just ask!) I was interested in broadening my design skills, so I started designing other things outside university. This portfolio showcases these other design projects, which have all been undertaken in my own time.

The 2011 Solidthinking Student Design Competition offered very broad submission guidelines; present a design that solves a problem, modeled and rendered entirely within the SolidThinking software package.

Modelling and Rendering

Winner of the 2011 SolidThinking student design competition

The Problem: There is a lack of suitable watches for the blind and vision impaired. Current solutions are either: Intrusive, like those which announce the time out loud. Fragile, like those where the user feels the hand positions of a tradition clock face.

A braille interface was a mechanically challenging prospect, so I chose to experiment with embedded rings; easy to implement and still easy to read. Stepper motor technology would allow precise control over indicator position without the requirement for delicate gears that might be damaged.

The Solution: Replace the fragile hands with two durable rings. Now that theres nothing to break the protective glass front can also be done away with.

Utilisation of electromagneticallly stepped rotation means that accidently knocking or forcing the rings will not break any delicate mechanisms.

The solution chosen features rotating rings to provide a tactile reading experience, separated by a stationary band with raised increments to provide a reference point. A traditional set of hands is present in the center of the watch face to provide an alternate reading method for able-sighted users of the watch.

The judging panel, which included the chairman of the IDSA George McCain, chose the Insight Haptic Watch as the winning design out of over 500 submissions.

CardKey
The CardKey allows you to store a key inside a credit card slot in your wallet - preventing it from moving around or falling out.

Problem Solving and Mechanical Study

Initial Solution Ideation

The Problem: Minimalistic wallets are great at not taking up much space in ones pocket, but they arent very good at carrying anything other than bank notes and credit cards. Like many people I like to keep my house key in my wallet, but when it fell out onto the floor at a bar one night, I decided I needed a better way of storing it, rather than letting it slide around inside.
It was only a matter of time until my key slid out of my wallet and I lost it.

The Solution: My wallet has space for far more cards than I need, so I started to explore ways to store a key securely in the form of a card.

First Prototype

On the first prototype the key was secured to an axle on the card. To use the key it was rotated 180 degrees, exposing the shank and turning the card into an extended handle. By putting a bend in the axle and constructing it out of spring steel, I hoped to prevent the key from rotating excessively, as a small amount of torque was required to straighten the axle out. The sprung design had the added bonus of allowing easy insertion and removal of the key from the card, making it possible to cut a new key replacement.

Unfortunately testing revealed that it was very hard to find a geometry that allowed the key to rotate cleanly without excessive lateral motion; a wide cut was required for the wire to bend properly, but this width also meant that the wire tended wobble around.

Take Two

The second prototype still relied on a sprung axle, but instead of the of the wire deforming, the card did; a pair of cams embeded in the axel pushed up on the card when the key was rotated, providing a restive force and keeping the key in place.

Refinement...

On the second prototype the key was moved to the center of card, but I soon realised that this made it very hard to get the key into the lock. The assymetrical arrangement of the spring sections was also unnecessary, and looked odd when I moved the location of the key back to the edge.
UNLESS OTHERWISE SPECIFIED: FINISH: DIMENSIONS ARE IN MILLIMETERS SURFACE FINISH: UNLESS OTHERWISE SPECIFIED: FINISH: TOLERANCES: LINEAR: DIMENSIONS ARE IN MILLIMETERS ANGULAR: SURFACE FINISH:

MIxx
To p o l o g i c a l l y Optimised Wheel
The MIxx car wheel has been designed through the use of Finite Element Analysis and Topography Optimisation to minimise its moment of inertia and maximise performance.

Analysis based Design

Topology Optimisation analyses the load forces on a structure...

Maximising the acceleration performance of a wheel isnt just a simple weight minimisation like most topology optimisations; not only do you need to get the wheel moving forward, you also have to make it spin. These two requirements have different minimisation parameters which must be combined.
Combining the total energy of the wheel... !=

And determines where material can be removed to save weight without sacrificing strength.

The technology: Topology Optimisation is a computational analysis method that finds the best distribution of material in a structure to support a given loading. Most commonly the best distribution is one that minimises the weight of the structure, though parameters such as the moment of inertia can also be optimised.

The new application: Optimising the spoke structure of a cars alloy wheels offers the potential to create a wheel that possesses superior performance characteristics to any other wheel design, allowing faster acceleration of the car or improved fuel consumption.

and taking the first time derivative... !"

! ! = ! = !" + !"# Converting this ! ! to a linear != acceleration... ! ! + !" tells us how to thus minimise make it as easy as possible ! to accelerate + !" the wheel !

!" !" = !" + !" !" !" = !"# + !"# gives the reqirement

1 ! 1 !" = ! ! + !! ! 2 2

! = ! !"#
!

1 ! 1 ! ! ! + !!with the work 2 2

!
done by the engine...

on the engine to spin the wheel.

I was able to achieve emulate an optimisation based on the complex minimisation parameter using only a mass-minimisation parameter using a set of carefully chosen approximations. Given that mass and inertia are inherently linked, minimising the moment of inertia also lowers the mass and vice-versa. I executed a set of mass-minimisation optimisations (the only type my software program could do) at different degrees of severity, and used these to create a spoke design with minimal material near the rim. The resulting design is effectively inertia minimised, thus approximating the derived paremeter. Analysis of the new spoke design showed greater acceleration abilities compared to that of a typical high perfomance alloy wheel, while FEA determined that the strength of the wheel had actually improved, despite the reduction in mass.

WINE L MP

The body of the Wine Lamp consists of a single folded sheet of laser cut steel and a wine bottle, held together only by the geometry of the two parts.

Complete to-market process

Conceptulisation and Design

The Problem: Lamps made using recycled wine bottles are plentiful, but most of them have a decidedly arts and crafts appearance to them. The Wine Lamp was an attempt to create a lamp that could be sold as a professional product.

The Solution: The main feature of the lamp was obviously the wine bottle. Bearing this in mind, I wanted to keep the rest of the lamp as simple as possible, and consequently explored different ways of using a single sheet of steel to support the bottle.

Construction of a salable product

I explored matte and satin powdercoated finishes. Even though it was more easily marked, I choose the matte finish for the end product.

Key Learning: It turns out that creating a legally sellable product involves a lot more than just coming up with a good looking design, especially when electricity is involved. Addressing these concerns ultimately took up the largest amount of time in the design process, resulting in many tiny tweaks to ensure the lamp met Australian saftey standards.

A simple loop to keep the lampcord in place suited the design aesthetic perfectly, but made it difficult to change the bulb. The marketed version used a custom made threaded washer, which screwed into an internal cord grip, and had to be made from acrylic for saftey reasons.

Using salvaged ball-bearings and other parts from an old university project, I constructed a device to consistantly cut the bottoms off bottles with a clean edge.

SlowCapital
RFID Venture
During my internship with SlowCapital I developed a key innovation in their RFID-active minibar project that ultimately evolved into a key feature of the product.

Industry Project

The Initial Concept

SlowCapital is a company developing RFID tracking of products in minibars, utilising smart inventory control to effectively combat shrinkage due to theft by patrons and employees, while simultaneously optimising sales mix and restock efficiency. From costing and profit margin analysis to securing freedom to operate, working within a highly experienced team taught me much about designing products in a commercial environment, and my concept of a breakable RFID tag was identified as a key element to help gain an edge over competing smart-minibar solutions.

There are several smart-minibar solutions on the market where technologies such as micro-switches or infrared detectors are used to determine whether a product has been removed from the fridge. Typically, a purchase is then recorded if the product is removed for more than a certain period. SlowCapital planned to do this with RFID technology for more reliable identification; smart tags attached to products would continuously inform the fridge what items it contained. If an item was outside the fridge for more than a few minutes a purchase was recorded. I proposed taking the concept a step further; by placing the tags in a position where they needed to be broken to consume the product, purchase logic could be simplified down to whether the tag was readable or not; quickly sculling drinks and returning the bottle to the fridge couldnt trick the system, and removing items but not consuming them didnt result in a purchase being falsly recorded.

I decided to undertake initial testing using beer bottles, as the crown seal appeared to be more difficult to work with; any solution determined for these would almost certainly work for a common screw cap.

Breaking the tag here successfully stopped it from transmitting

But breaking it here didnt

Unfortunately, breaking the tag near ends of the antenna didnt register as a state change on the RFID reader, and moving the break location closer to the center obscured the opening of the bottle. A new design was needed.

By using a small plastic cap it was possible to move the break in the tag to right near the base of the antenna, while keeping the opening of the bottle clear from obstructions. A similar concept was used to package products with many possible openings like chocolate bars.

In a variation of the capped concept, an enlarged cap also acted as a drinking glass for the beer bottle, thus turninng the cap into an enhancement to the user experience rather than simply an impediment.

The final mock ups worked perfectly, providing easy to open packaging that reliably registered consumption to an embedded RFID pad within a minibar fridge or bench top display tray.

The final presentation material also included a quick concept design of an RFID-active bench top unit for use with products that werent required to be chilled.