After relaxing and destressing over a well deserved spring break, the team came back and went straight to work on design development and manufacturing our first iteration prototype to present next Tuesday. The goal for Prototype Inspection Day (PID) was to present in-person or through recordings of previous testing that all aspects of our design can work at the bare minimum independently and ideally together. We would then like to receive feedback from the judges on how to make the independent components work congruently with one another or how we can modify our design to be better moving forward.

Some challenges we have been facing are 1) automating the stirring mechanism in such a way that water doesn’t leak out of the steaming chamber base, 2) automating the stirring mechanism with the least amount of vibration and electrical noise possible, 3) hiding components for automation within the housing, and 4) operating the steaming chamber heating element without any leakage from the extreme heat produced.

Additionally, we have had accomplished several goals this week including but not limited to 1) successfully providing power to both heating elements and monitoring their temperature through the PCB, 2) automating the stirring process through a gear on the steaming chamber base, and 3) testing with various epoxies to make the steaming chamber food-grade. See the figure below for a high-quality render of our current plan for automation.