Even with the SLDR event behind them, the DesiGators are committed to finishing the semester strong and continuing their progress on the dehydrator. A ton of new parts came in this week, the most notable of which is the table! This stainless steel structure will serve as the base for the dehydrator and will house all the measurement and sensing equipment.

On Friday, the metal supports for the shelving system were delivered along with the first 20 3D-printed brackets from Larry engraved with the team name and logo. These components allowed the team to build the first (very basic) prototype of what the shelving units will look like.

The team also spent some time revamping and updating the hair handling subsystem using existing components and modeling devices that could be used to place the relative humidity and temperature sensors at the inlet and outlet holes of the chambers. The team is making good progress on this subsystem and expects to have it ready for use with the chamber near the start of the Spring semester.

The perfect ending to the week was the delivery of the lightweight aluminum perforated sheet to be used as another iteration of the the drying trays. The team headed to the DML lab right away to make the sheet into a tray and presented Dr. MacIntosh the results. He was greatly impressed by both the cost and lightweight nature of the aluminum tray and encouraged the team to use that as the primary design going forward.

As the semester comes to a close, the DesiGators are thrilled with the progress they have made on their project. They will continue to work over winter break on improving the design and getting ready for manufacturing mayhem at the start of the Spring semester. Happy holidays and stay tuned for more updates next year!