Week 7 - Well Design

While our testings with the K'nex electrospinner seem to be doing quite, we've realized that the well holding the polymers we are testing is not the most ideal shape. The height of the well just reached the spindles on the gear and the area of 64 square centimeters resulted in more polymer to be tested than necessary. Because of the flat shape, when polymer was poured in, it would fill the entire bottom before actually reaching the spindles on the gears. This caused a large percent of our polymer solutions to become a waste as they were no way near spindles. It takes time and money to create polymer solutions; therefore it was necessary to create a new well that would require the least amount of polymer to be used as possible.

New Well Design

This new well design has a cylindrical shape in order to fit with the electrospinner's gears. It also reduces that amount of polymer needed to reach the spindles. There is a small rod projecting out of one side of the well that will allow the copper wire to feed into the solution. This was, the electrical current can run through the solution and the copper wire is not as exposed as it used to be, reducing the likelihood of someone getting shocked. The rod was placed at a raised angle so as to not allow the solution to flow out of the well. All that remains now is to wait for the well to be 3D-printed and test it out. Hopefully all this well won't react with the solution and we can continue electrospinning.

*The well design was created by Travis Weiss