Tim Describing the system and how it works

One Last Thing...

Here's the link to the Beaumont Enterprise Newspaper article that was written about our project.

Feel free to check it out.

http://www.beaumontenterprise.com/news/local/lamar_team_builds_lunar_space_washer.html

Well... That's it for us...

Okay, so....

The Launderers have graduated. We're super happy that we were able to work on this project. It was, by far, the pinnacle of our collegiate career, and we're happy that we were able to work together.

We're leaving our followers with these last pictures of our final design and a link to the news paper article that was written about us.

The Beaumont Enterprise came by and interviewed us on Wednesday, May 19th, and the story ran today on the Front Page. We were very happy with everything, and this article was a great way to close out the project.

Here's the link, and the last few pictures are above.

http://www.beaumontenterprise.com/news/local/lamar_team_builds_lunar_space_washer.html

Thanks for following us. We had a blast.

~The Lamar Launderers

Showcase Pics

Since the Showcase:

Alright, since the showcase, we've kept pretty busy.

After wasting too much time preparing for the Fundamentals of Engineering exam 2 weeks ago, we got back to our testing.

We were always a little nervous about how our urethane drum was always pinched between the agitator arms and the press mechanism, so we took the machine apart (again) and cut the press down to a less stressful shape. We were really pleased with the results, as it still gives beautifully distributed pressure across the drum, without the annoying pinching and stretching side-effects.

With the press re-shaped, it was time to get down to business and really get to testing. We threw in about 15 articles of clothing (10 good-sized towels and 5 T-shirts) and got to washing. We adjusted agitator timers, got the press to push farther than it ever had, and were finally satisfied with what we had.

Everything worked great. We were super happy.

Now it was time to see how well we could get rid of stains. Dr. Jim Jordan of the geology department at Lamar University VERY graciously donated some Lunar Soil Simulant for our testing purposes. We bough some cheap white T-shirts and went to town. We stained them with ketchup, mustard, coffee, tomato sauce, and both wet and dry lunar soil simulant.

We washed everything with five minute agitation cycles and a completely full load. Things went really well, up until the very last rinse cycle...

Our motor was set to go... but instead of pushing the paddle forward, the machine just made a loud klunking noise and shut itself off.

We froze, paranoid about what would happen next.

We unplugged the machine, checked everything out and decided to plug it back in.

Nothing happened.

Tim unplugged it, and a huge spark nearly took off his eyebrows...

Turns out we fried one of our relays. The control relays we were using simply weren't rated for motor applications. So we bought some new ones. They'll be in by Monday, we'll re-wire everything and go to town again.

Believe it or not, things are still looking up. We've got NASA Engineers coming to see the design on Wednesday, when we present to all our Lamar faculty and peers. It should make for some good times.

Thanks for sticking with us... We have some new photos from the showcase (thanks to Tim's wife, Maria) that we're about to upload.

~The Lamar Launderers.