While knowing how fast a gear or wheel rotates is certainly useful, equipping it with an external sensor can be cumbersome and affect performance. I devised a way to embed directly into the .
Dubbed MechSense, the system was developed by a team at MIT led by mechanical engineering graduate student Marwa AlAlawi.
It includes custom extensions to the SolidWorks computer-aided design program. Using its extended software, the user begins by specifying the rotating and stationary parts of the mechanism he plans to print, as well as its center of rotation.
The program responds by locating four patches of conductive material. One of these patches is printed directly onto a rotating part (such as a gear). Otherwise it will be printed from non-conductive material. The other three patches are printed in a circle on a stationary plane just below that part. These three are separated from each other by a small gap of non-conducting material.
As the gear rotates, its wireless patches (known as floating capacitors) repeatedly pass through the three fixed patches in sequence. Each of them detects the resulting change in its own capacitance and relays that data to the processor via wires in the fixed part of the mechanism. Special software in its processor can calculate the gear’s angular position, direction of rotation, and speed of rotation.
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In testing this technology, scientists created desk lamps that change color or brightness when the base or center is twisted. A planetary gearbox whose rotation is detected and measured. In addition, a wheel that measures the distance rolled. AlAlawi hopes MechSense will ultimately make the field of electronics more efficient and greener.
“To produce electronic devices with very little e-waste, we want devices that have a smaller footprint and perform well,” she said. With different materials and manufacturing processes, I think we can use the same geometry and scale it down with less tolerance.”
Source: MIT
