SMART STUPA

Objective

The objective of this projec is to make a prototype of a portable housing solution for people on the move, these people will be mostly be from low income group who cannot afford a lot to buy a new house every time they move but they need a good standard of living and cannot stay in a zuggi or tarpulin sheet houses

Need

This is a technology driven project rather then a customer based project, when I started there was no fix customer in front of me although there was one objective and that to get a house done which will be hasle free to carry along with you.

Solution a panelled dome house, panels thin in size but strong and lightweight.

I have planned most of my assignments according to the final project, the dome is made completely using tools and skills I learned during FabAcademy.

I learned to develop a website here, I learned about version control system and how to update the content of my website in the GIT repository

I have planned all my activities relating to the final project, I will try and stick to this schedule although most of my seniors and instructors say that it will be a deficult to stick to the schedule and I will always be running out of time, I made a Gantt chart to keep check of my time.

In this assignment week I studied various tools for computer aided design, I had to select one tool which I would use for the rest of my fabcadedmy as the tool of my choice for all my design work. I learned to Design, Render, Animate in this week, ultimately I seelected SolidWorks as the tool of my choice, I am using Solidworks licence copy which which is valid for a year for FabAcademy 2017 students

Here I made skectches of my final project and also some animations, I also designed the enclosure of a motion sensing device which will be used inside my dome. This will be used in the 3d design week assignment

This week was about laser cutting and vinyl cutting, I made a logo for my final project and in this week and used it on one of my panels. I also made a few coupons to test my composites, they were not done in this week although I used the same skills

This week is the starting of electronics, I had a few electronics to be done in my final project, I learned all the skills for it in this assignment. Milling, populating,stuffing and soldering I learned in this week.

I made the enclosure for my motion sensing switch here

Here I learned to design my PCBs, I was introduced to the components of electronics here, I made the PCB design of the board used in my final project using the skills I learnt here

Here I designed the mould of the panels I am going to use in my final project, I had already designed the file in this week, I learned to use the ShopBot machine in this week, although Vigyan Ashram does not have one but we used it from one of the college in Pune. I also made a mould for the life size sructure for the future development

I use the combined skills I learnt in these three weeks to make a motion sensing switch, here the input is a motion sensor and the output is a relay driving board which is going to switch on/off as it receives signal from the motion sensor. Here I learnt to code, I am new to coding and arduino is great platform for a newbie like me. I code my board using arduino IDE. It is a simple code which swwitches on and off the light as the motion sensor senses the motion.

Download the code from here

Here I made a small mould and casting in Hydrostone of my logo, It did not give a great result but it is a start. The whole process was done in 3 stages, starting from making a wax mould in modella and then making a silicon rubber negative of it and finally a casting in hydrostone.

This was a big week for me,I wanted to make a composite for my final project. This composite will be used by for making the panels of my dome. I leanrt about compaction in this assignment and why is it so important in composite, although the method I used for my final project is a hands layup method I used the technique of squeegie for cmpaction.

I wanted to try natural fiber and polyester resin (beacause it is cost effective ). Neil had suggested me to use Super Sap made by Entrophy resin, but it was not very affective, the cost of 2 lt of resin was 5500/- Indian Rupee and I will be needing around 20 lt of it for the scaled down model and around 100lt for a life size model if I had decided to make one.

Natural fibers failed badly with polyester resin, bamboo shavings , burlap, cotton cloth failed due to multiple reasons.

The wetting of natural fibers in polyester resin was a big problem, the natural fibers did not gel well with the resin.

I started to realise that I have to give up the idea of natural fibers in resin forming a good and strong composite, I tried with glass fiber and it gave me good results, it was wetting nicely, it was formig a good bond with the resin and it was strong, I had to use a lot of force to breaki it, it was great in compressin and tension and as well as impact. I am using squeegie technique for compaction

Although I have not mastered the molding and casting technique I am making up for it by scrapping the extra parts using a grinder, All the body parts were covered during this process, the dust generated of grinding the composite is very hazardous. I made sure that the whole set up was in the open and in the direction of the wind.

I made all the 16 panels the same way and assembled them using nuts and bolts, I modified the moulds made for the doors and the wondows.

Here I gave the future plans and Implications of my project,cost estimation was a major part of this assignment. I mentioned what tools and tackles were used for making the dome.

I made presentation slide and a video describing my project and got an creative commons licence for my final project

Future Plans

Vigyan Ashram has an Enterpreneur who is making domes made out of ferrocements, he has an established bussiness, I want him or anyone else to take up this project and go ahead with it. I would like to be in the team taking care of all the technicalities.

When I started making this dome I did not have a fix customer in front of me but now that the project is nearing a success I see a lot of potential customers. A unique thing about this dome is that it can be taken with you if you have a decent enough size vehicle with you, the dome panels will stack on one above the other like lego bricks or plastic chairs.

I see a lot of people can benefit from such homes, people like construction labourers or contract farmers are few amongst them.

Besides this house can also be a temporary structure for places affected with natural calamities or refugee situations

Download all the files related to the project

Motion sensing ligt enclosure- PCB holder solidworks file, Motion sensor casing solidworks file, motion sensor cover solidworks file

Motion sensing ligt enclosure- PCB holder solidworks file, Motion sensor casing solidworks file, motion sensor cover solidworks file

Motion sensing electronic board files sch file and brd file

Code for the board code

Mould files partition 1, partition 2,partition 3,partition 4,Sides,