GNEG 1103 Introduction to Engineering FALL 2013

EMPACTS learning experience project

Company name: Mr. Bubbly incorporated

Bubble Machine project

Team Members: Chris Miller, Marco Morales, Abdulrahman

Zabarah, Cote Sams

Instructor: Alex V. Stratigakis

Abstract

Our main concern is to find a solution that will allow us to

build the whole mechanism so that it will run under the power

of one motor, and that can be controlled by a single switch.

Considering the fact that the machine should be portable the

powering of the machine under one motor will be far more

practical.

Table of contents

Page 6: Written Report

By paragraph

1. Introduction

2. Project requirements and constraints

3. Basic features of the machine

4. Our engineering design method

5. Our search for solutions

6. Preliminary design

7. Detailed design

8. Results and solutions

9. Cost/profit

10. conclusion

Page 10

References

Written report

Mr. Bubbly Incorporated is a local business hoping to go international with its innovative designs,

and visionary ideas for devises that will be designed to make life more fun, and much easier to enjoy.

Our first product is one that does just this; it does this by fulfilling the consumers need to portray a

euphoric atmosphere at a party, or gathering. The product can also entertain kids for hours on end

allowing parents or caretakers to take care of important business. Our product is the amazing bubble

maker 2014.

Our company project, like all that have come to pass, comes with requirements and constraints.

Our machine must not incorporate any parts of a commercial product already on the market. The

mechanism must also be safe, and easy to use while incorporating an innovative design. Our Bubble

machine must also utilize its own innovative bubble solution, and in no way can said bubble solution

already be on the market. Above all the machine should at all costs be portable for our customer. With

these requirements and restrictions in line we can move in the right direction with our feasibility study,

and our innovative problem solving process. At the present time we simply design and manufacture

small bubble machines, but these are not simply bubble machines. The Bubble machines that we design

carry with them a look into the future of engineering in the Mr. Bubbly incorporated business. Our

designs are innovative in this way, because we have three main criteria for all of our designs. First, we

focus on portability, how will our customer handle the product? How will he customer transport the

product, and finally where will the customer take the product? Next we look at efficiency, our products

are designed to be easy to use, easy to fix, easy to manufacture, and most importantly our designs are

made to be safe. Finally, we focus in on the cost of our product, we do this by keeping a close eye on the

materials we use and the receipts we accumulate. We can accomplish theis tasks by first looking at the

competition and what they are working on, in the future we plan to look at the competition and back on

our previous designs in order to be innovative, but as this is our first design we have started by looking

at the competition and asking ourselves two simple questions. What has the competition done? How

can we do it better and differently? We must do this and focus on our three main criteria. When all of

our information is compiled the answers we receive are simple, we must design a bubble machine that

can produce bubbles at a rapid and sustained pace, the machine should also run under the power of one

motor as this will be far cheaper to produce and be much more efficient for the user. The machine

should also be portable and easy to use, this has lead our designers to research compact designs as well

as various ways of making this machine so that the consumer would find it very easy to use.

Our first initial Idea of what we were headed towards was a machine that had a circular bubble

wand that, as it rotated, would dip into a pool of solution contained bellow it in a container. All the

while a fan would be producing wind in the background giving us bubbles as the wand continuously

passes in front of it. Our first design did just that, but it was in no way portable and was in no way cost

efficient to produce on a large scale. We at this point decided that we would need to utilize new and

developing technology to meet our strict criteria. The team decided to use the North West Arkansas

Community College’s Empacts lab 3D printer. The 3D printer literally allows us to take the vision in our

mind and project it into a computer program, which eventually allowed us to create our Final Bubble

container. The 3D printer also allowed us to print a bubble wand that would fit our criteria, and fit our

newly printed container. We now only needed to decide whether we would use pulleys or a series of

gears that would transport the power of our motor to the bubble wheel allowing for rotation. Gears

were printed out, and it was immediately evident that gears were far too complicated and far too

expensive to produce. This violated our simplicity criteria and forced us to seek other solutions. We now

begin implementing a simple pulley design, which worked amazingly. The pulley design was not only

cost efficient, but it was also simple to operate and far safer that a series of gears. Our first pulley design

again was not cost efficient or compact enough. Our second pulley design worked amazingly, but the

motor we were using was far too powerful and produced far too much rotation in our bubble wheel.

Finally with our third attempt, and the idea to run two compact motors off the command of one switch,

we found our final design. The machine that our design team has come up with uses one of the simple

machines, the pulley, to transport the power of our first motor to the bubble wheel. The second motor

runs our fan, which is positioned just behind our bubble wheel. When run in unison both these small

and compact motors work together to run our machine, and to produce bubbles. The bubble solution

itself is comprised of a simple glycerin, water and dawn dish soap concoction, this simple solution is

consumer friendly, and cost efficient. The container that holds the solution makes up most of the

machine, as our bubble wheel is housed in the container making it very portable. The machine is

comprised mostly of plastic, but not just any plastic. The plastic used in our machine is recycled plastic,

so not only is our machine user friendly it also appeals to people all over the state of Arkansas whom

may be concerned about the use of ecofriendly products.

Mr. Bubbles Incorporated would like to make the money spent on the production of on unit in one

order. One unit costs $45.75 to make and an order consists of 300 units, now the average cost to ship a

unit is $3.99, and with toys it is $0.85 per item lb. our machine weighs about 2 pounds , so one shipment

will cost us about $5.69. Added to our manufacturing price we have a total cost of $51.44 to

manufacture and ship our product. Through simple mathematics we find that our products shelf price

will be $18.00. This price excludes sales tax and is a rough estimate; it is also subject to change at any

time.

Our machine is the product that our company, Mr. Bubbles incorporated is proud to present to the

consumer and a machine that our company is proud to call ours. Our first design will hopefully lead to

more, and with hard work, and dedication to the happiness of the customer it may be possible for our

designs to become better and better as time marches on.

References

1.) "How To Price Shipping and Handling Fees » Practical Ecommerce." Practical

Ecommerce. N.p., n.d. Web. 02 Dec. 2013.

2.) "Thingiverse - Digital Designs for Physical Objects." Thingiverse - Digital Designs for

Physical Objects. N.p., n.d. Web. 02 Dec. 2013.

3.) "Super-Duper Homemade Bubbles & Wands - Design & DIY - Honestly... The Honest

Company Blog." Honestly... The Honest Company Blog. N.p., n.d. Web. 02 Dec. 2013.

4.) Holtzapple, Mark T., and Dan W. Reece. Concepts in Engineering. Second ed. N.p.:

McGraw Hill, n.d. Print.

5.) Lial, Margaret L., John Hornsby, and David I. Schneider. Trigonometry. Boston: Pearson

Addison Wesley, 2005. Print.

Appendix

Feasibility study

- Our first blue prints and ideas.

the pulley design was first proposed

Preliminary design

- Our first initial schematics/ motor.

Detailed design

- We finally began hands on work with our ordered parts, and quickly began

to cross ideas off the list.

The product of the Northwest Arkansas

community college’s Empacts lab 3D printer.

Our first bubble Wheel.

Our first pulley design

the gears idea was quickly ruled out, as it was found this

design would require more time than we had available to us.

This was going to be our final product, but we could

not find a viable solution that would allow us to dampen the motors power.

Final product

- Our final product utilizes the power of two small and moderately powered

motors. One runs the bubble wheel via a pulley, the other turns our fan via a

short drive shaft.

both motors run off the command of

one switch.