The Design Portfolio

- of -

Justin Ketterer

“He that invents a machine augments the power of a man and the well-being of mankind."

- Henry Ward Beecher, 1887 http://justinketterer.com

• •

“The Juicenami”

Assignment: design and build a machine which accomplishes a task of your choice. It must incorporate a four-bar linkage, a gear, and a cam.

My design solution: “The Juicenami” – I led the design and construction of a device which opened a canned beverage, poured it into a cup, and deposited a reasonable amount of ice in the cup. The device: • • Secured a cup and the canned beverage.

Employed two perpendicular shafts.

– One shaft served as one linkage in an offset slider-crank. The slider-crank drove a metal punch on rails which punctured the can. The opposite end of this shaft also served as the hand-crank for actuation of the system.

– The other shaft, perpendicular to the first and driven by a gear, served as a camshaft which drove a two-stage door system which measured out portions of ice, dropped into the cup through a metal chute.

Ice Reservoir Two-Stage Door System Cams Canned Beverage Hand Crank Gears Metal Punch

• •

“The Juicenami,” cont.

The following projects will show concept sketches and iterative development of the device; sketches for this project were submitted to the Professor and could not be retrieved for inclusion here.

Results: – – Continuously served beverages with the device for several hours at the “Design Day” competition. “First Place for Mechanical Design” award. “Third Place, Kid’s Choice Award.”

Design details permitted rapid adjustment of cam and gear timing (details marked).

Aluminum Ice Chute: gravity drives transfer of ice from reservoir to cup.

Ice Reservoir A two-stage cam-driven door measured a reasonable amount of ice into the cup.

Ice Chute Ice Reservoir Intermediate Ice Chamber Door One Rubber bands for door retraction Door Two Cup

• •

Human-Powered Water Purifier

Assignment: build a human-powered water distillation machine which could convert “polluted” (food colored) water to “fresh” water.

My design solution: a pedal-powered, friction-based device.

– Major design constraint: a human generates a surprisingly small amount of energy, relative to energy required to boil an appreciable amount of water 

The design must minimize energy losses!

– Electrical generators and heating elements have significant energy efficiency issues. Friction directly converts mechanical energy to heat without intermediate steps and their associated inefficiencies… Bicycle drive-train can have losses of less than 2% of input energy… An outline for an efficient concept emerges. – I developed a concept which used two wooden disks spinning against either side of a small aluminum drum to heat the water inside. Evaporated water exited and condensed outside the drum via copper tubing.

Water Purifier: Major Systems

Selected Sketches from Water Purifier Project Development

CONCEPTUAL EMBODIMENT DETAIL

Heating Device Pedals Heating Device Intermediate Shaft Pedals Heating Drum Threaded rod / bolts press friction pads onto sides of drum.

Intermediate Drive Shaft

Frictional Force Concepts & Project Results

Early concepts involved applying force through the drive shaft or via a conically shaped rotating element. These were mechanically infeasible and would have been difficult to fabricate and adjust.

The frictional force mechanism needed to apply a variable normal force at the drum, subject a minimum number of components to stress, and be easy to fabricate. This concept was the first to get close to satisfying those requirements— but would still have been difficult to fabricate… Iterative revelation: C-Clamp & ‘”Lazy Susan Bearing”!

This is the form which the final frictional mechanism took… Spanning bolts and thrust bearings give a linear, balanced force system. This eliminated the problems of bending forces, which the concept in the image above may have suffered from.

• Results: – – Water reached a boil in less than one minute of pedaling. Design flaw: restrictive distillation tubing caused polluted water to boil out of the heating chamber, polluting the distilled “fresh water.” – Lessons learned: uncertainties about design features must be counteracted by flexible or conservative designs.

• • • •

“M1A3 Sparty Tank”

Assignment: design and build “a robot that can roll around and interact and talk with Michigan State University sports fans during sporting events.”

My design solution: – The initial concept suggestion by the project sponsor was infeasible given the four-month project window and the technical difficulties inherent to creating a humanoid robot. For any design scenario—but particularly in a case like this—it is important to work with the customer to define the fundamental need which he wishes to satisfy. I identified that “crowd entertainment” was the crux of this task.

– Based on this key goal, I proposed a remote controlled “battle tank” which could roll around during games and shoot t-shirts to the crowd with a pneumatic air gun. The sponsor loved the idea.

More than any other design project I have done, this required attention to planning, conceptual iteration, sourcing of material, and fabrication work with machine tools. More than any other project I have done, I had fun!

Google: “M1A3 Sparty Tank” for more information.

Iterative C.A.D. Development… Initial Concept Sketch… Final Product!

“M1A3 Sparty”: Initial Concept & Embodiment Drawings

•

“M1A3 Sparty Tank,” cont.

In this project, I learned the importance of the designer focusing efforts at the level of detail

which the complexity of the project permits him to accomplish:

– For a very complex system, time constraints require the design team to shift much of the detail design work to suppliers, thus saving time for the team to design those components which permit the integration of the supplier’s components.

– This project would not have been finished if I had irrationally devoted myself to designing and building every single one of its components.

– Thus, this project demanded that I become more of a “systems engineer”—I had to focus more time on the integration of components which were sourced and purchased by team members.

– Below, I show several of the purchased components from the pneumatic system which I had to “reverse engineer” into hand drawings (calipers were my constant companion in this project), and then model in our C.A.D. assembly to preempt interference issues.

The Paintball Air Tank Reservoir Pneumatic Solenoid Valves Hose Fittings…

“M1A3 Sparty Tank”: Production Documents…

Custom designed parts required dozens of dimensioned drawings to clearly convey to the team what had to be made.

•

C.A.D. Production Documents & Tank Project Results

When it was easier to do so, production documents were produced by printing out C.A.D. images with specifications written or printed directly on them.

Template created from CAD model for motor hole location and drilling.

• Results: – Delivered a tank which launched shirts to the upper deck of our school’s basketball arena.

– Third place in “The Prism Ventureworks Prize,” as well as in the poster competition.

– – – Featured in The Lansing State Journal.

Design flaw: underpowered motors limited turning ability.

Lessons learned: • Peer review is critical for successfully completing a design project. • The most critical step in design after problem definition is generating and contrasting numerous alternative subfunction concepts, early in the design process.

• Design must be done at the level of detail which team resources and the project’s complexity warrants.

•

Solar Powered Hot Dog Cooker

Assignment: design a solar-powered hot dog cooker for the Heat Transfer Lab competition. Maximize hot dog temperature; minimize weight of device.

– Led the design of a large parabolic hot dog cooker. A truss frame was fabricated using housing insulation foam sheeting; Mylar was used as the mirror surface. Major features shown below: • • • A ‘sighting tube’ to align the cooker with the sun.

A Mylar lined cover at the focal point minimized convective heat losses and caught errant reflected sunrays.

A durable ‘pivot point’ which allowed ease of alignment with sun and minimized structural flexure from uneven ground.

– – Results: placed well in the class, but team placement would probably have improved with more testing; other team member’s interest in doing further testing was lacking. Lesson learned: project success directly relates to the team member’s interest in it—good leadership entails sparking this interest.

•

Drawing to Supplement Technical Writing

I’ve found that the best way to clearly convey technical concepts and processes is through digital or hand sketches. Here are some images from my undergraduate reports, done in MS Paint:

A report on how printing presses function: the newspaper’s path and order of inking.

A camera system to illuminate and photograph a micro pillar array submerged under water. Glass mounted obliquely in the tube illuminated the pillars indirectly.

A “rheometer”-a spinning conical disk submerged in fluid which yields a laminar linear velocity profile, and a uniform shear field. A camera measured the pillar tip deflection through the clear plastic of the rheometer. Force-displacement relationships could then be determined.

Particle image velocimetry was used to monitor fluid flow in a water channel. The three areas in which images were taken are emphasized.

• • •

Abstract Design Concepts Through Images

Below is what I consider the key concretization of ideas which I put forth in a paper which I wrote for my graduate design class (“Human Design Context: Identity, Values, and Ethics,” J. Ketterer, 2008). In that paper, I relate man’s nature to the purpose of design: because some actions can harm life while other actions promote it, the purpose of design must then be

“creating products for customers which improve their lives.”

To do otherwise would risk harming human life. Values which objectively promote life instead of harming it—what I’ve called “Objective Values”—exist, and are independent of what the customer and designer choose to personally value.

These facts set up the three broad domains of values illustrated below in the “Venn Diagram of Values.” A “Designer’s Values” are his personal values as it relates to the design process (payment for work done, job satisfaction, etc.) and the “Customer’s Values” are his or her personal values with respect to the product being designed (does the customer believe that the product provides a useful service, is the service worth the cost, etc..). But, independent of these two individual’s sets of values, are “Objective Values,” the third domain shown below.

The key point: for a given customer and designer, any given product will lie within one of these seven domains of values.

• • •

Abstractions & Images, Cont.

This tool acknowledges that customers and designers can engage in trade which objectively harms life. For example, cigarettes and heavy smoking would fall into region six because it does not promote life. However, it is obvious that the cigarette manufacturer and the individual who smokes still consider cigarettes to be a value worth trading, or they would not choose to trade.

This tool also acknowledges that there are boundaries of uncertainty over what region a certain product belongs in… There are debates over whether a certain product is really “life promoting,” for example, and this is illustrated by the black shaded boundary. The blue and green shaded regions illustrate the regions of value where a customer’s or designer’s personal values—and consequent ideas of opportunity cost—make it hard for them to decide whether the product under consideration is a value to them or not.

The key messages which a designer should take away from this tool are the following:

– – It is important to identify where a certain product or product concept

currently

would reside within these seven domains of value.

If currently outside of domain 7, a designer should devote his creative skills towards identifying and resolving the product issues which are preventing it from being a life promoting value to both the customer and the designer himself.

– If already in domain 7, creative energies should be devoted towards optimization—thinking of ways to improve the product by rendering it more effective at providing the nine “Objective Life Promoting Values” listed in the table within domain 1 titled “

Values

which promote

LIFE.

”

• • • • • •

Abstractions & Images, Cont.

Here is a second visual tool which I created and proposed in the “Identity, Values, Ethics” paper. The “Productivity Pyramid” illustrates how an employee’s productivity is directly related to the stimulation of his personal values.

For a given employee, a project will lie somewhere within the spectrum of productivity represented by this pyramid.

The pyramid’s base rests on the initial requirements which must be met by the employee, if he is to engage in the job at all: the “Talents / Training” required to do the job (or the motivation to learn the skills for the job!).

Following consideration of “Talents / Training,” the initial point at which a project will then compel an employee to participate, through stimulation of his personal interests, is then represented by the base of the pyramid: the employee must agree with the

Ethicality

of the project. When a customer’s demand and an employee’s ethics agree, this serves as the first point at which an employee will be motivated to do the work. As a contrast, imagine asking Gandhi to work on the design of a weapon of mass destruction. No matter what payment you offered him, he would be recalcitrant in working on the weapon’s design. His attitude in this case is a direct result of the fact that he does not fundamentally consider that this project is ethical.

The next level in the pyramid which represents another form of motivation which can compel an employee to participate in a project is of course

Salary

. As long as ethical agreement is achieved, providing payment will only further motivate an employee to contribute to the project. The “Zone of Opportunity Cost” also shows that, generally, when ethics are sacrificed for income, motivation will decrease, and vice versa.

• • •

Abstractions & Images, Cont.

The peak of the pyramid represents the point of optimal agreement between an employee and his work. This is where an employee will be compelled,

through the work’s direct stimulation of his own values and interests

, to achieve his personal peak of productivity. This occurs when

the employee enjoys the nature of the work itself

. When an employee finds the work enjoyable and gives him a sense of accomplishment, his or her productivity will surge.

A second “Zone of Opportunity Cost” between the “Salary” and “Values” level illustrates that, generally, sacrificing job satisfaction for income will lead to decreased productivity, and vice versa.

The key messages which this tool helps to emphasize are the following:

– Managers and employees should actively engage in introspection and evaluation of what they value to determine the work which they fundamentally enjoy doing.

– Companies which actively seek out and hire employees who love their work will not only maximize the value which the employees contribute to the company, but they will also have extremely happy employees—a true win-win situation!

– Especially in the long run, it is best to invest in employees who enjoy the work they do. While more experienced employees may initially be more productive than those with less experience, I firmly believe that an employee’s excitement about a project will trump experience in the majority of job positions. An excited employee will, of his own accord, put in the effort required to come up to speed in a job and overtake the productivity of an experienced—but less motivated—employee.

• •

Photography & Art

Aesthetics may have not been emphasized in my formal engineering education, but I feel that I have a strong sense of what fits the definition of—and the ability to create—the visually appealing. The following slides display this through my art, photography, interests, and activities. First, several projects from high school art and drawing classes… Attention to detail is not lacking!

Symmetrical Art Assignments with a Pattern of our Choosing Curves, Edges, and Points Oil Paint Art I, 2000 12” x 12” Street Corner Pencil Drawing I, 2001 12” x 12”

Photography & Art, Cont.

Two More Art Projects The Ablest Navigator Monochromatic Marker Assignment Art I, 2000 11.5” x 17.5” Deep Sea Stevenson H.S.

Two Point Perspective Assignment in Pencil: Fanciful Rendering of Hallway Corner in High School Drawing I, 2001 17.5” x 12.0”

•

Photography & Art—and New Technology!

Prior slides which explained my design projects displayed my ability to convey ideas through images created in MS Paint—a software which is limited by a relatively small toolset. To more easily compose digital sketches, I purchased a drawing tablet which came with a copy of Adobe Photoshop Elements. The increased flexibility provided by this new hardware and the powerful tools of this software will enable me to accomplish quite a bit more in digital rendering.

A typical “Facebook” profile (my sister’s, in fact).

My profile, touched up with the tablet and Photoshop’s trimming tools.

• •

Photography & Art, Cont.

Natural landscapes, industrial architecture, and dynamic statuary are fascinating and appealing to me. I would classify my aesthetic interests as that of “Romantic Realist.” Industrial Architecture… Völklingen Ironworks, Saarland, Germany Warehouse canal, Hamburg, Germany

Monumento Nazionale a Vittorio Emanuele II Rome, Italy

Photography & Art, Cont.

Kinetic art; art which conveys dynamism… A techno themed party which I hosted— illuminated by glow sticks; black lights.

(Photo credit: Danielle Pisano.) One frame from a time lapse video I made (youtube: /watch?v=hz0a29kzLEs) … lighting and lines which do the same.

The sculptures of Jean Tinguely. Basel, Switzerland.

•

Photography & Art, Cont.

Landscapes, vistas, man’s position within it… Paros, Greece Interlaken and Lauterbrunnen, Switzerland