Fall 2020 Design I Final Competition
Section B: The Miners
Problem Statement: How can we develop a cost-effective and less wasteful means of cleaning commonly touched surfaces during COVID?
Team Members: Zachary Bogle, Cameron Stenhouse, Joseph Wyshel, and Charles Hulongbayan
Instructor: Bridget Wetzel
Hi team,
I share your bug regarding single-use sanitizing wipes and appreciate your view of this problem through the lens of sustainability. Could you please clarify for me:
-The intended user
-The modularity aspect (which may address my two subsequent questions)
-What the total capacity of the device is – your video showed a doorknob and a phone. How will larger high touch-surface areas be accommodated?
-Along those lines, you compared your device to products that are intended to sanitize large rooms (commercial grade) and larger surfaces (consumer grade). How would your device compare, efficiency-wise, if you were to sanitize an entire room? If you were to sanitize a surface?
1) Our intended buyers are companies, stores, or public building (places that have a custodial staff or people whose job it is to clean); our intended users are the custodial staff or cleaning crew, but it was important for anyone to be able to use it so it could fully replace the single-use disposable wipe.
2) The shielding (the lower part of the device) can come off and be changed out for a different module.
3) As you see it now, with no other emitters, the maximum useable area is about the size of a full-sized keyboard. Clean this would take a bit longer, but it will work.
4) We weren’t comparing our design to devices that could clean a full room but something closer to a handheld cleaner (https://www.cureuv.com/products/germawayuv-55-watt-handheld-uvc-surface-sanitizer). The consumer-grade versions we compared ours to were UVC light wands and those boxes you can put your phone in to clean.
Too add on to answer 2 the shield is modular, so that the user can buy or make different shield with different sizes and capability’s. For example if the user need to clean a gym they can buy a special dumbbell sized shield. This keeps the cost down, the customers only get the shields they need and makes the product more wieldy, if they need to clean a phone they don’t need a keyboard sized shield.
Adding onto our response to question 3 about the maximum capacity, because there is wiring in the modular part of the device we could design a module that had more emitters, allowing the limiting factor to be the batteries, switches, and wiring.
1) Our intended buyers are companies, stores, or public building (places that have a custodial staff or people whose job it is to clean); our intended users are the custodial staff or cleaning crew, but it was important for anyone to be able to use it so it could fully replace the single-use disposable wipe.
2) The shielding (the lower part of the device) can come off and be changed out for a different module.
3) As you see it now, with no other emitters, the maximum useable area is about the size of a full-sized keyboard. Clean this would take a bit longer, but it will work.
4) We weren’t comparing our design to devices that could clean a full room but something closer to a handheld cleaner (ex. GermAwayUV Xtreme Watt Handheld UVC Surface Sanitizer). The consumer-grade versions we compared ours to were UVC light wands and those boxes you can put your phone in to clean.
Hello Miners,
Thank you for sharing your video and congratulations on making it to the final competition.
Are there any material degradation concerns from using UV light to sterilize items?
How much UV of this wavelength do you need to dose the items in the box with, given the light source distance to the surfaces? Energy per square unit of area required at this wavelength for some length of time results in sanitization…?
How do you ensure the whole surface area is dosed (full coverage)?
I see a huge safety concern with the open side of the box. If any surface can satisfy the 4 sensor requirements, what is to stop users from applying it to themselves,others, clear glass? How is this concern addressed in your risk mitigation plan?
Thank you,
Garrett
1) The wavelength of UV light that we are using will degrade certain materials, mainly polymers and untreated wood (metals and treated materials are basically unaffected), that resistant to UV light but with the short amount of time this module is using those effects will be minimal and UV blocking coating are fairly inexpensive.
2) The energy per square unit is 5.54 mW/cm2 and with this size (10cmx20cm) at a distance of 10cm and at 5 watts it will take between 6 and 10 seconds to sanitize the area.
3) This current module is to only be used on flat surfaces but with its modularity, we could design a model for any surface type. The modularity does create problems in ensuring that the time component is correctly followed but given a bit more time and someone who better understands programming could program a small computer to recognise the shielding and calculate how long the emitters will take to clean.
4) Because we planned on only selling to companies, we assumed that those who use it will have to go through some training to do so. For the issue of glass, most modern glass windows are UV blocking and we could change the 4 physical sensors for a luminance sensor to ensure full contact.
Great job on the presentation.
– Does the device offer any indication that it is operating properly?
– How do you ensure that the user doesn’t ‘zap’ themselves with the UV light?
– Any design improvements you would implement for full scale production?
1) As of right now, it does not, but we could easily put an led that lights up whenever the lights are active.
2) There are sensors on the bottom to ensure full contact with whatever surface is being sanitized before the device will emit UV rays, and the people using the device will be trained on how to use it.
3) We would like to add an indicator light as stated above and program a small computer to recognise the shielding, calculate how long the emitters will take to clean, and automatically keep it on for that long, as long as the safety switches aren’t tripped.
3. We could look at cheaper materials as well, as the device mainly consists of steel and aluminum construction, and we could probably replace a lot of parts with plastics and lighter/cheaper UV resistant materials