Removable windshield scraper blade
From DDL Wiki
Final Report DUE DEC 7th* - ONE PER TEAM
- Will be accepted up to Dec 11th < midnight
SUBMIT AS WORD, PDF, OR WIKI PAGE
In your final report, you are looking to 1) provide evidence and make a case to support the need for your new design; 2) provide documentation necessary to fully describe and define the detailed design for production; and 3) use engineering analysis and your prototype to demonstrate feasibility of the design. Each team should document any information needed to accomplish the above objectives. To help you avoid forgetting anything major, a minimum requirements checklist will include:
Contents |
Executive Summary
(1-page max)
- Appropriate background on the project.
Market Research
- A clear statement of the opportunity you have identified, and documentation of market research to support the need.
The need that we found was for people to have a way to get ice off there windshield with out having to be outside scrapping it. We found that there where no other products designed around this purpose. This is what we saw as our opportunity to fill a niche that was clearly not being meet. We felt that if an effective deign could be made people would buy the product because of the near universal distance for standing out side in the cold while scrapping ice off your windshield.
When trying to decided if the windshield scrapper idea that we came up with would be something that people would actually want to buy we decided to sample the people we knew to get there reaction to design idea. We each contacted 5-10 and between the four of us only one person didn’t like the idea. There were however several people that had reservation mostly having to do with how easy it would be to attach and how quickly it would get ride of the ice.
When we were trying to decided on what kind of attachment we should make between the wipers and our blade we thought it would be time to do some more market research on what most people’s windshield wiper blades look like. What the problem boiled down to was did a great enough percentage of people’s wiper blades have holes on top and a recess that we could justify the use of a permanent attachment part that utilized these holes. To get a good cross section of what our target demographic (having plenty of disposable income and like gadgets) had on there car we started out in CMU’s parking lot and surveyed the cars, it also couldn’t hurt that CMU is ranked very high for out of shape campuses. We found rather favorable results most cars windshield wipers had holes in there wipers. Then we decided to expand our sample to include cars parked in the Pitt university area and found similar results. In the end we sampled more then a hundred cars and found when all was tallied up the result was 1 to 13 in favor of holes.
Design
- Engineering drawings that fully specify the production design and its function, including a bill of materials listing each component, dimensioned drawings of each custom part / catalog references for each purchased part, specification of materials and manufacturing processes for each part, and documentation of how the components are assembled.
Analysis
- Engineering analysis of the design including 1) an appropriate numerical analysis for your design (required for all) 2) a DFX/FMEA analysis as appropriate for your design, and 3) documentation of any engineering testing performed to support design decisions. In all cases, clearly state assumptions and conclusions.
After the first snowfall of the season, we were able to test our prototype on an actual windshield. The before and after pictures shown above shows that the Plexiglas blade does not scratch the windshield when a large amount of force is applied, and clears away the snow and ice in one back and forth motion. This affirmation told us that Plexiglas is a safe choice for the blade and that our final design would be safe to mount on a windshield wiper and run with the wiper motor.
Video of windshield wiper attempting to clear snow/ice
Video of OUR windshield wiper blade clearing snow/ice off of same car
QFD
- A QFD to show (at minimum) the quantifiable engineering targets you have set for the design, relationships between engineering specs and stakeholder needs, and benchmarking of competing products. As always, explain your conclusions, such as what strengths your design has over competitor products and who is likely to buy it.
Final Prototype
- Documentation of the final prototype including a discussion of what it demonstrates, what was learned from it, and how it differs from the final design.
Testing of Final Prototype
- Documentation of user-testing and user-feedback on your design and prototype.
Should the design be pursued for production?
- A conclusion of whether or not your design should be pursued for production and why.
Next Steps
- Identification of next steps and any remaining barriers to bringing the proposed design into production.
Team Contributions
- A section on design process and team dynamics that briefly describes the design process path followed by the team and lists semester contributions and team roles from each team member.
Some teams may include additional information, such as a provisional patent draft, optimization results, functional decomposition, VOA, survey results, product family analysis, detailed cost estimation, etc. Each team should identify which aspects are appropriate for making the case for their own product and aim to impress the client with thorough and appropriate work necessary for the client to make a decisions on whether or not to pursue your product further.
