MAKING MUSIC Members of Schulich Soundstage perform a group piece in the 2010 spring recital. -photo courtesy of Tim Heger -

Design Fair 2010

Fourth-year students, in all disciplines, completed their final year with group project presentations at the annual design fair. The event showcases innovative student designs and prototypes.

Attendees voted Functional Magnetic Levitator as their favourite project. The team included APEGGA student members Trevor Wilde and Riley Kotchorek, completing the team were Rhonda Dalsin and Mike Wasson. For more information on the winning project go to: http://sites.google.com/site/funcmaglev

Project ideas were found on the Nerd Kits website, which features electronics kits to purchase online. Each kit is designed to teach people about various scientific principles – for this project, electromagnetism.

The original idea was to simply levitate one really heavy object, possibly a hammer, this evolved into an array of five coils in a line. There was lots of creative leeway and the only restriction was that the system had to be digital not analog.

Summary details of the project are; five coils of wire wrapped around iron cores, connected to an Arduino microcontroller via a simple high power MOSFET amplifier. This microcontroller accepts feedback from a Hall effect sensor placed beneath the levitated object, detecting the object's vertical position.

When the user sends a command to the system from a computer, the levitated object is passed from coil to coil, moving it horizontally. The project was capable of levitating 380 grams for extremely long periods of time and can pass the object between coils at a transfer rate of two seconds between coils.

Twitter functionality was added as a demonstration of remote control for the system, giving global access to the ability to control the system.

The team resolved issues over time and all agreed initially there was a huge learning curve. Levitation was new to them. Research gave great descriptions of how to implement an analog design; they had to figure out how to transfer that to a digital system.

Schedules were frequently adjusted. One issue could hold up progress. When resolved the teams schedule was readjusted.

Approximately 240 man-hours were used over the winter break, trying to stabilize the levitation prototype, and debug a lot of timing issues. The primary difficulty understanding precisely what the physics of the system was, without actually knowing what parts were to be used

The group learned how to work as a cohesive team realising each individual was interconnected into an overall system. Work could not simply be divided up, the project required constant communication between all team members. Great transferrable skills were learnt making team members better engineers.

NERD KIT WINNERS From left, APEGGA student members, Trevor Wilde and Riley Kotchorek, with fellow team members Rhonda Dalsin and Mike Wasson, are all smiles as they show off their winning design project, the Functional Magnetic Levitator. -photo courtesy of Brent Kotchorek -