Week5 - Life cycle analysis Activity

 

 

This week, our group disassembled Breville Citrus Press and the process was quite interesting.  At the beginning it was easy to be disassembled but then it became harder and harder. Then, we generated the product's life cycle analysis report by using greenfly. This report indicates that energy damage and global warming are the most significant issues, water use and solid wastes can not be neglectable as well.   

Week 4 Project 1- Reflection

4 pre-final posters+technical drawing

 

This medicine dispensor is called P&L because it contains two kinds of tablets - Pramipexole Dihydrochloride (90 tablets *1.5mg) and Levodopa (0.25g*100 tablets).

It is specially designed for Parkinson disease’s patients. It helps the patients to take out the medicine easily. The shape is more ergonomic and aesthetic compare to existing medicine packaging. Elderly people feel comfortable and warm when they use it.

Elderly people is the important group in our society, however, a lot of medicine packaging in the market are difficult for them to open and take the tablets especially for the elderly people who have diminished hand strength and hand tremor like Parkinson disease.

My design take these problems into consideration, here are the explanation about P&L:

1. The shape is designed ergonomically to fit people’s hands. The textures on the side can be anti- slipping and tell them to push. Elderly people feel comfortable to grip it.

2. Push- action is better than twisting-action for them. The action requires less hand strength and hands shaking which they have.

3. The inner part is designed to take one pill each action instead of making messy everywhere.

4. Combining two kinds of medicines in one medicine box can reduce the materials.

 

Feedback from Peers: Olivia said the third poster's renderings are confused for her.

Feedback from Cormack person: the concept is good and he suggest looking at the current market to see the construction inside and how it works. The colour could be different.

Feedback from Tutor Tom: The technical drawing should show the section view for all parts. The size of my mock-up is a bit small and the person who has big hands can not fit in it.  In addition, finding a solution to prevent the inside part not pulling out completely. 

 

 

Video reflection

Auto desk wholesystem and life cycle thinking

1, It is extremely important to have a clear and specified problem statement in the view of the entire system before considering about the final solutions . The whole system and life-cycle, contains material selections and manufacturing the product, user’s experience, and disposal.

2,To optimize the environment performance, it is crucial to consider the impact of the life cycle of the products with different aspects of criteria.

3, When it comes to design improvement, sticking on optimizing the little part of the system is not really a wise choice, It is better to reset our scope to the entire system to figure out the which parts play the key roles to enhance the system performance.

In conclusion, The video does give us a clear instruction about a better and reasonable way of designing a sustainable solution, a good designer is suppose to have a broad viewpoint and abilities to analysis and balance all the different factors which have impacts on whole system and life cycle to achieve the efficiency maximization, not restricting by the certain part of the system.

Lightweighting

1. Lightweight has a strong connection with sustainability of the product, since use of less material in manufacturing will contribute to less negative impact from production to disposal, also lower expenses.

2. There are strategies to reduce material usage, for example, replacing crucial sections by stronger and lighter materials, hollow parts in steel structure, placing ribs in plastic to optimize geometry and structure for lightweighting.

3. There are further strategies to reduce the material, like sharing the product by many people, extend product’s lifetime, using recycled components or replacing the physical objects with digital components.

In conclusion, lightweight solution for is really a good sustainable strategy to optimize the product, it will beneficial to reduce the pollution for raw material producing, optimizing transportations simplicity and portability, enhance user experience and reduce overall cost to produce a single unit.Although, there are enormous benefits to apply lightweighting to the products,we should always keep in mind is before we apply any lightweight methods, it is quite essential to use the simulation tools or other analysis technic to ensure the reliability of the lightweight method.

Green material

1, The utilize of green material make effort to reduce the environmental pollution and energy consuming.

2 , Green material also involved in the factors like embodied energy of the raw materials, toxic bi-product and emissions during manufacturing and good end of life option.

3, Look at the cycle impact of the whole system for a certain green material.

In conclusion, It is always best way to find an appropriate material by taking consideration of whether the material is abundant,, non-toxic, energy saving, property guaranteed and affordable. Moreover, the recycle material perhaps a really good option in the design, for example, embodied energy of a recycled aluminium is 90% less than production of virgin Aluminium metal.

Improving product lifetime

1.Improving product life is a excellent method to take best advantage of the energy and material into the product

2, To maximize the product life time, we can improve the durability of the product or make it simpler to rebuild or upgrade with disposal material,(more recyclable).

3. The concept of sustainable reduces the use of raw materials and reduce waste at land, through recycling, reusing, and repair;- and the hope to stop extracting resources and zero contents to the landfill.

In conclusion, this video give us a good concepts about what criteria of lifetime is required for a good design, some product need to be physically or stylistically durable to minimize the energy and material consuming, like the electronic devices, cars and so on, but on the other hand, the stuff like food container should have a good recycle-ability and biodegrade easily and harmlessly.

Greenfly

1. Transportation requires lots of energy, especially between a long distance shipping.

2. Water usage in production is high compared transport and use of the product.

3. Recycling is an efficient and eco-friendly way to reduce solid waste and reserve energy.

In conclusion, for a designer, we should develop more solutions to reduce energy, water usage and protect our environment as well as communicate environmental sustainability considerations of my design.

Energy efficient design

1.Understanding energy flow chart of the entire system, the major energy loss is during the energy conversion.

2. Loss of energy in heat, friction and fluid flow can be optimized by a good design with reasonable physical and mechanical structure.

3. Sustainable design using efficient energy, saves – time, cost, material, and the product will reap higher performance.

In conclusion, it is essential for the designers or engineers to think more carefully about energy system of their design, like heat, friction and fluid flow, because if any product has really poor efficient, it will lead to more consumption of the coals, in sense of more energy loss in the procedure.

 

Week3- Project1

 

 

This pill box contains one kind of capsules at the top and another kind of capsules at the bottom . The shape is designed to fit hand ergonomically. You slide the lid to take out the pill. The magnitude of the hole allows only one pill to be taken out.

The material for this pill box is LDPE.





Week2 - Project 1 Reflection

This week, i chose hand tremor from the disabled market because Parkinson' s disease is very common in our life and finding a way to help the parkinson's patients is very necessary and urgent.

I generated three concepts which are water bottle, detergent and pill box.

 

Here are the  suggestions from my tutor Tom and two peers Zhaozhao li and Olivia Qiu yuan Lin.

 

The first concept is a sports water bottle because parkinson's patients are always feel thirsty during the night. There is a tube in the middle and you can slide it to lock and unlock.  However, it's no difference from the current water bottle and not obvious to solve the problem of hand tremor.

 

The second concept is the detergent. You push to the right and a cup of detergent will fall down.

It can work for top load washing machine and the detergent can not be everywhere even for the hand tremor person.  However, it is not designed for the front load washing machine.

 

The third concepts, you shake the bottle the pills will come out but you can not let just have one pill at one time.  The second pill box is a pull up and down mechanism but it seems too complex.

 

Finally, i will go the third concept- pill box and think about this further...