This week, we submitted our preliminary design review (PDR) as well presented the PDR to our peers and coaches. We received feedback on how we could better prepare for the real presentation in front of our sponsors coming up in two weeks! It was also insightful to see how our peers’ projects were also developing and to take some inspiration from their presentation for our own. Furthermore, the team has completed purchase requests needed for grease testing; this includes buying various sensors and testing equipment, as well as setting up the sensor testing schedule. We are excited to get hands-on testing of the sensors to actually see what methods we have developed work or not, and reflect on these changes for our PDR in our preparation for the presentation to NextEra Energy!

This was one busy and productive week! Our team spent a lot of time together brainstorming ideas for how our sensor will be implemented. This image of our whiteboard shows some of the potential candidates we may be working with. Our biggest next step from these concepts is to begin testing. We have a lot of testing and modeling to do to ensure our system will be as accurate as possible. Another exciting development this week was receiving some grease samples from our sponsor! These samples are going to be critical to our development process.

This week, we completed our product design specifications. This included addressing the customers’ needs and their correlation with product specifications. To achieve this, we developed a House of Quality table to capture the correlation between customer needs and specifications, measuring the importance of each specification. A risk table was also developed in order to capture what risks require the most attention and prioritization. A project timeline table was also created to visualize major deadlines for deliverables and ensure we stay on track throughout the year. In the picture below, we have just finished our weekly meeting with our liaisons and coach. From this meeting, we got to understand more about the specifications for our design, as well as insightful images of the wind turbine main bearing, both as a drawing and with real images taken. We also discussed traveling over to their site to present our preliminary design review(PDR) in October. Outside of all the tables, we will continue to do research for better concept generations, complete the preliminary design review draft, and other assignments throughout the following week at a table in the Prototyping lab or Reed hall.

This week, we scheduled our meeting with our Liaisons and came prepared with an agenda for the meeting to ensure it ran as smoothly as possible. During our meeting with the Liaisons, we began with introductions and coordinated schedules to ensure weekly meetings would be feasible. From there, we delve into the project’s scope of work and constraints. The liaisons shared their expectations and vision for the scope of work while also providing us with valuable resources such as a database on wind turbine failures and CAD model files of the wind turbine to guide our design considerations. This meeting provided a solid foundation and direction, enabling us to begin developing design conceptualizations and conducting research. To wrap things up, we finalized our team name and logo with input from our coach. With this groundwork laid, we are now ready to move forward and tackle the upcoming assignments with greater clarity and momentum.

Hi everyone! Welcome to our team. We are working with NextEra Energy to prototype and design a sensor to detect ferrous debris content in the main wind turbine bearing grease. This week, we introduced ourselves and met with our coach, Edwin Marte, and lab manager, Larry Warren. In our meeting with the coach, we discussed the scope of work, drafted the memo, and future availability of the team members to meet amongst ourselves and with the coach. We finalized our team name and worked on the team logo. Next week, we will prepare an agenda and meet with our liaison engineers, Drake Viscome and Malcolm Butler. We are excited for the learning experience we will gain from this experience and develop further as professional engineers!