Friday, 9 March 2007

Design Concerns - Motor

Talking about a maintenance-free means that any damage to the motor or the circular blade will acquire the user to return the automatic secateurs to the shop where a technician will repair the tool. Assigning the maintenance task to the elderly will be a great disadvantage for the tool. It will require the user to acquire knowledge of how the tool works internally, a totally needless task.

Also you are right that we have forgotten to mention where the motor will be. The motor is situated at the front end of the upper handle, right in front of the battery. Since the motor has a cylindrical shape it will only require a small modification on the right side of the handle. Basically a small round extension on the right side.


Design Concerns

I think that making a tool like this "maintenance free" is unrealistic as even the best hardened blades wear down remarkably quickly and need replacing. The teeth will need to be very small to prevent sticking, which makes them wear out even faster. We would need to make it so that the blade can be changed by the owner.

We have also not factored into the current design where the motor for the saw will be. The photo on the left is of a dremel motor. I speculate that we would need something like this to cut through a branch up to 1cm diameter. This could be done relatively easily with regular secateurs providing the branch is not too dry.

On reflection, the group has decided that the tool can be serviced in store or returned to the manufacturer. With normal usage* the blade will need to be replaced every two years.

*normal usage is determined from emprirical data.

Monday, 5 March 2007