SpaceSeal

06/05/2018

Hello everyone! As some of you may know, our team is currently in Houston for our Micro-g NExT challenge test week. We, along with five other teams, will be having our device tested in NASA’s Neutral Buoyancy Lab today. Attached below is a link to a live stream of today’s testing at the NBL. Our team will begin testing at 1:25pm CST, but if you wish to view the other teams as well they will be starting at approximately 8:15am CST. The livestream’s password is “microg”, and it is case sensitive so be mindful of that. Thank you to those who tune in as we hope to have a successful testing experience!

http://www.ustream.tv/channel/IRD-testchannel

Thanks guys, and Roll Tide!

JSC Information Resources Directorate test channel. Verified 1-04-2016

04/20/2018

Happy Friday everyone! After considering our post-testing design changes, this is the final product. As discussed in the previous post, there was an issue in the plug being prematurely ejected by the weight of the black handle. The retaining ring in the red guide was moved up approximately four inches to ensure that the plug will not eject until the black handle is fully depressed. In conjunction, an extension was added to the red guide to assist in controlling the tool. We have come a long way from our first prototype (pictured with Alexey), and we are excited to finally see our field ready design come to fruition! With this semester coming to a close, we will be presenting our final product to our peers and faculty members this afternoon. The majority of our remaining work will be NASA related documentation and preparing for our test week in June. We will continue to keep you posted as we enter the home stretch of our project. Take care!

04/12/2018

Hi everyone, hope that you are all well! After several bouts of testing and group discussion, we have decided to make a few cosmetic changes to the tool. The tool worked flawlessly, but several members noticed during testing that the plug can be ejected prematurely if too much weight of the handle falls onto the plug. In order to prevent this from happening, we widened the inside lip in the guide that holds the plug stationary. The wider lip requires more force to eject the plug, so the weight of the handle alone will no longer be enough force to eject the plug. This will ensure that the plug is secure until the user is ready to seal the hole. I will be back with pictures whenever our new tool has left the 3D printing station. Take care everyone!

03/28/2018

Testing season is among us! Pictured here is the setup we have constructed to perform our field testing for our final design. The tool, a plug, and myself are sitting on top of our handmade drying rack. The rack allows all tools and plugs to drip dry back into the tank after testing. The test stand is a simple PVC pipe frame with a 1/8" thick aluminum plate bolted onto it. The plate has holes varying in both diameter and angle of incidence. The holes range from 3/8" to 1 1/8", and the angles are from 0-45 degrees. The plate and frame are submerged into a large tank of water to simulate the underwater testing that will occur at the Neutral Buoyancy Lab. With the rubber that we had ordered and the mold that one of our team members designed, we created a batch of rubber plugs to test with. We ordered more rubber just to ensure that we have enough backup plugs for our testing. An air pump is used to create air bubbles and flow directed at the bottom of the selected hole, and one person observes the plug from various angles to see if any air bubbles are escaping around the plug. If no bubbles are visible, then the test is a success. From our first two days of testing, we tested 24 times on varying holes and only had one failure! With the end of the semester approaching we have a bunch of paperwork to get working on, but the testing will continue. Roll tide, everyone!

03/07/2018

Hello everyone, here is our first 3D printed rubber mold. This is our first prototype mold that will be used to craft the rubber plug in our design. With the machine shop currently constructing our test stand, our rubber mold will be in use here soon. We ordered four pounds of rubber to craft several backup plugs just to be safe. The idea of a rubber plug/rubber mold was a long debated topic amongst our team, but the first mold turned out successful. We are excited to see how the first rubber plug solidifies in the mold and how well the plug performs in our testing. With testing on the way, we will be back to fill you guys in soon! Best wishes, and Roll Tide!

03/03/2018

Hello everyone, I am back with some exciting news. We now have the final 3D print of our design completed and ready for testing! After several trial runs with the printing process, we were able to slowly but surely alter and adjust our design to get it to where it is now. Print times can sometimes be slow due to heavy use or potential error in the printer itself, so it is not always easy to get quick feedback on the results. Our team did a great job of being proactive during the printing process and staying up to date on any and all changes that were to be made. Thanks to their hard work, now we can have a design that we're confident in! With our test stand currently under assembly and our final part completed and ready to go, we are excited to fully transition over to the testing phase of our design process. We will report back soon with any successes or shortcomings that we may encounter, well wishes and take care!

12/31/2017

Hi everyone! Hope you are all having a wonderful and much deserved holiday break. We are excited to inform you that our SpaceSeal design has been chosen to move on to the next phase in the Micro-g NExT program! This means we will be traveling to Houston during the first week of June to have our design tested in their Neutral Buoyancy Lab. This is a wonderful opportunity, and we're glad that we'll be sharing it with you all. We look forward to the upcoming semester and the various activities that we have planned. Our outreach meetings with Athens High School and Columbia Elementary will be great learning tools for both us and the students as we walk them through the Micro-g NExT program. We still have some designing and testing in the works, so we will have our hands full this Spring. That's all for now everyone, have a happy New Year and enjoy the rest of your holiday break! See you soon!

12/05/2017

Hi guys! I wanted to share my experience at UA's NASA Days on Nov. 3-4. As you can see, I had a great time and got to take this awesome photo! NASA Days is an awesome way for potential employers to come and connect with students and delve deep into the work that they're currently pursuing. Whether it be various clubs or senior design teams, they want to know about the knowledge and valuable work skills that you are obtaining while at UA. These companies also offer short informational sessions about the work that the company does and the full and/or part-time employment, Co-Op, and internship opportunities that they have available! I encourage you to go out and attend NASA Days next year. It was an awesome experience and a wonderful way to interact with employers. Hope all is well, we'll be in touch! Roll Tide!

11/16/2017

Hi guys, I'm back with good news! The second round of printing was a huge improvement. The red parts are the updated/unscaled pieces that were printed after the scaling issue with the white parts. I think the red assembly gives us a great idea of what we want our finished product to look like. The team and I sat down yesterday afternoon to put some of the finishing touches on the design dimensions, and we think that we just about have it nailed down. I'm proud of how the team quickly and easily addressed the 3D printing issues and how soon they were able to provide a new prototype! Keep up the good work, guys!

11/15/2017

Hi guys! Just wanted to share with you how our first round of 3D printing turned out! We wanted to print the tool at 0.75 scale of original size. Somehow the scaling produced an error in one of the parts, so it's back to the drawing board. We hope to have a full sized print shortly to ensure that it was only a scaling issue in our design. We'll be back soon with our printing updates, well wishes!

11/13/2017

Hi, everyone, and welcome to our page! Our team of five undergraduate Mechanical Engineering seniors has chosen NASA's Micro-g NExT Module Leak Repair System for our senior design project. Our objective is to design a handheld tool with which a hole in a punctured surface of the International Space Station can be sealed and repaired. After the hole is sealed, it must be able to withstand 14.7 psi after the module is re-pressurized so it can be used by the astronauts again. We hope that our page will provide an insight throughout our experimental, collaborative, and developmental processes during the next two semesters. Brett Lewter, Meichelle South, Coleman Wlodarski, Keating Mefford, and Brandan Banker are my five teammates on SpaceSeal that we will be following. If selected by NASA, our design will be tested at the Neutral Buoyancy Lab in Houston. My name is Alexey, after Alexey Leonov who was the first astronaut to perform an EVA (extravehicular activity) spacewalk. Follow me as we progress through our project. We hope that my perspective will give a fun and enjoyable way to stay up to date with our work and allow us to interact with students who may be interested in pursuing an engineering or other technical fields. We're looking forward to sharing our journey with you!