Through reduced 3-D printer cost, increased usability, and greater material selection, additive manufacturing has transitioned from business manufacturing to the average prosumer. This study serves as a representative model for the potential future of 3-D printing in the average American household by employing a printer operator who was relatively unfamiliar with 3-D printing and the 3-D design files of common items normally purchased by the average consumer. Twenty-six items were printed in ...
An open-source 3-D printable laboratory sample rotator mixer is developed here in two variants that allow users to opt for the level of functionality, cost saving and associated complexity needed in their laboratories. First, a laboratory sample rotator is designed and demonstrated that can be used for tumbling as well as gentle mixing of samples in a variety of tube sizes by mixing them horizontally, vertically, or any position in between. Changing the mixing angle is fast and convenient and...
The U.S. electrical grid, the largest and most complex man-made system in the world, is highly vulnerable to three types of external threats: 1) natural disasters, 2) intentional physical attacks, and 3) cyber-attacks. The technical community has recommended hardening the grid to make it more resilient to attack by using distributed generation and microgrids. Solar photovoltaic (PV) systems are an ideal distributed generation technology to provide power for such microgrids. However, both the ...
Design and Implementation of an Automatic Security Lighting for ATBU, Yelwa Campus Chior David #1, Ifeora Henry #2 and Lisiyas Alfred #3. #1 Department of Electrical & Electronics Engineering, Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University, Bauchi. #2 Department of Systems Engineering, University of Lagos, Lagos. #3 Department of Electrical & Electronics Engineering, Bayero University Kano, Kano. Abstract— This paper has covered the design of an automatic security lighting system for ATBU, Yelwa Cam...
Recent advancements in open-source self-replicating rapid prototypers (RepRap) have radically reduced costs of 3-D printing. The cost of additive manufacturing enables distributed manufacturing of open source appropriate technologies (OSAT) to assist in sustainable development. In order to investigate the potential this study makes a careful investigation of the use of RepRap 3-D printers to fabricate widely used Black Mamba bicycle components in the developing world. Specifically, this study...
Bodies of water provide essentials for both human society as well as natural ecosystems. To expand the services these water provide, hybrid food-energy-water systems can be designed. This paper reviews the fields of floatovoltaic (FV) technology (water deployed solar photovoltaic systems) and aquaculture (farming of aquatic organisms) to investigate the potential of hybrid floatovoltaic-aquaculture synergistic applications for improving food-energy-water nexus sustainability. The primary moti...
A source of large surface areas for solar photovoltaic (PV) farms that has been largely overlooked in the 13,000 United States of America (U.S.) airports. This paper hopes to enable PV deployments in most airports by providing an approach to overcome the three primary challenges identified by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA): (1) reflectivity and glare; (2) radar interference; and (3) physical penetration of airspace. First, these challenges and precautions that must be adhered to fo...
Aggressive growth of land-based solar photovoltaic (PV) farms can create a land use conflict with agricultural production. Fortunately, this issue can be resolved using the concept of agrivoltaics, which is co-development of land area for both solar PV and agriculture. To investigate and quantify PV generation potential, without harming agriculture output, this study explores the viability of agrivoltaic farms deployment on existing grape farms in India. Considering the shade tolerance of gra...
Lowcost gas metal arc welding (GMAW)based 3D printing has proven effective at additive manufacturing steel and aluminum parts. Early success, however, was based on handwriting Gcode, which is inadequate for the majority of potential users. To enable automated slicing a 3D model and generating Gcode for an acceptable path for GMAW 3D printing, this paper reports on upgrading of the free and open source CuraEngine. The new slicer, MOSTMetalCura, provides the following novel abil...
Nickel doped zinc oxide (Ni/ZnO) nanostructures have the potential to improve the performance of electrochemical capacitors. This study investigates the preparation of Ni/ZnO nanomaterials by facile co-precipitation (CPM) and hydrothermal (HTM) methods. The effect of the synthesis methods on the optical, structural, chemical and morphological properties on ZnO products is investigated using ultra violet (UV)-visible spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction (XRD), field emission scanning electron micro...
Barriers to inventing electronic devices involve challenges of iterating electronic designs due to long lead times for professional circuit board milling or high costs of commercial milling machines. To overcome these barriers, this study provides open source (OS) designs for a low-cost circuit milling machine. First, design modifications for mechanical and electrical subsystems of the OS Distributed 3-D (D3D) Robotics prototyping system are provided. Next, Copper Carve, an OS custom graphica...
Avoiding climate destabilization caused by greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, requires climate-neutral electricity sources. It has been proposed that the GHG emissions from coal-fired power plants can be offset by carbon capture and sequestration or bio-sequestration. However, solar photovoltaic (PV) technology has recently declined so far in costs it now offers both technical and economic potential to offset all of coal-fired electricity use. PV only emits GHGs during fabrication and not during...
This study presents an entirely open-source, low-cost power monitoring system capable of many types of measurements including both loads and supplies such as solar photovoltaic systems. In addition, the system can be fabricated using only open source software and hardware. The design revolves around the Digital Universal Energy Logger (DUEL) Node, which is responsible for reading and properly scaling the voltage and current of a particular load, and then serializing it via an on-board ATTiny8...
Simple 3-D printable open source hardware designs have proven to be effective scientific instruments at low costs. Further development in this area is coupling open source electronics with 3-D printable mechanical components to make fully functional distributedly-manufactured mechatronic tools for science. One research area where such low-cost technology is needed is to characterize thin film anti-reflective coatings and transparent conducting oxides (TCOs) for the glass, mirror and solar pho...
According to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) ‘s indicator baseline 2017 report of South Africa, the percentage of the population using safely managed drinking water services has remained more or less constant around 91% between 2014 and 2016. The observation of the same variable from 1996 to 2011, shows a significant increase from 76.6% to 89.4%. This therefore means between 2011 and 2016, the change has been insignificant. To have a sample analysis in this regard, on the dynamics...