GEK1523T Assignment 2 2011

by

WU QIONG SHAN QUAN ZHENG SHANBO

A0066096X U0800663 U0800665

TABLE OF CONTENTS

RECOGNITION OF NEEDS

IDENTIFICATION OF CONSTRAINTS IMPOSED

SPECIFICATION AND REQUIREMENTS

IDEA GENERATION AND DEVELOPMENT

DETAIL DESIGN

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PRODUCTION OF DESIGN

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DISTRIBUTION, SALE, USAGE

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OBSOLESCENCE

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CONCLUSION

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APPENDIX

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RECOGNITION OF NEEDS Mouse is a very common problem: in houses, lofts and commercial buildings, anywhere there are human activities, there are traces of mouse. The house mouse is remarkably well-adapted for living year-round in homes, food establishments and other structures. Mice and rats contaminate the environments in which they live through their urine, droppings and hairs. They can carry a wide range of diseases that can be passed on to humans, either by directly contaminating food with droppings and urine, or by contaminating surfaces. Rats in particular can pass on Weils disease, which can be fatal to humans. Rats can also cause extensive structural damage to property. They are capable of gnawing a range of materials including electric cables and wiring, which could cause fire or electrocution accidents. Home owners have three control options available for ridding their premises of mice: toxic baits, known as rodenticides traps, or glue board

In this project, we are going to design a device to trap the mice as to fulfill the market needs. IDENTIFICATION OF CONSTRAINTS IMPOSED For mouse trap design, there are certain constraints need to be considered before finalize the detail product specifications: Ergonomic Constraints: Ergonomic factors need to be studied to ensure the device is easy to operate and deploy. Safety Constraints: The device must not be accidently triggered and hurt people pass by. Geometry Constraints: The device has limited overall size, all the functional parts and control system needs to fit into it. Manufacturing Constraints: The device will be mass produced, so the product design needs to consider manufacturability and ease of assembly, as well as availability of standard components. Economic Constraints: Limitation of Development, Manufacturing, Marketing and Distribution costs. Aesthetic Constraints: The shape, color, texture and form of the product must be attractive to customers. Ecological Constraints: Impacts to environment during the life cycle of this product must be minimized.

SPECIFICATION AND REQUIREMENTS Specifications:

Product Weights: 2.5kg Product capability: Able to trap one or more normal Singapore size mice Product dimension: 30cm (Length) 30cm (Width) 30cm (Height) Production cost: SGD 68. Reliability: Must not be false trigged when deploy the mouse trap

Other Requirements:

Safety: The product must meet safety standards formulated by government agencies. The device will have entrance size that only allows pest like mouse to enter, so that pets like cats and dogs will not be hurt accidentally. There will be safety feature to prevent human being from electric shock.

Maintenance: Ease of maintenance, no special tool is needed when perform simple inspection or cleaning of the product. Environment: All materials used in this product must be recyclable or biodegradable. Need to consider minimum carbon footprint and environment impact throughout the whole life cycle of the product.

Materials: Material used in this product must align with UL, CE and ROHS regulations. Packaging: Styrofoam and carton box is required for individual production packaging. Documentation: A simple user instruction with graphical illustrations should be included inside the packaging. User-friendly: No need to reset each time before trapping, just deploy the device at the places where user needs like farm, house or outdoor. Auto-Reminding system to inform user to dispose the trapped mouse. User can select either LED or buzzer alarm to indicate the device operating conditions.

Productivity: Dispose 5 or more mice at the same time based on designed container size. Effectiveness: Easy to dispose the trapped mouse and does not require user to re-fill the baits constantly. Hygiene: No exposure of mouse body into atmosphere.

With the design constraints, product specifications and requirements identified, we proceed for brainstorming of mouse trap design.

IDEA GENERATION AND DEVELOPMENT Mind mapping tool is used to analysis and understand the different mouse trap design features.

Comparison of Existing Designs With Google search engine, many different mouse trap design can be found easily, this table compares existing typical mouse trap designs. Existing Designs
Traditional Design

Pros Simple design. Easy to setup. Low cost.

Cons Difficult to clean up after use. Dangerous for kids or pets who might mis-trigger it. Only catch one mice each time

One-way trap design

Very low cost, just use plastic Only catch certain size mice. sheets. Only catch one mouse each Suitable for DIY, time. Very easy to setup. Simple and effective design. Very safe for kids and pets. Disposable. Kill mouse in 3 seconds with high voltage. Safe for kids and pets. Can store up to 10 mice. Easy to clean up and deploy. Equipped with status indicators. Disposable. Material used is recyclable. Low cost Easy to setup. High price. Need to use battery.

Victor Multi-Kill

Disposable Mouse trap

Only catch one mouse each time.

Multi Catch Mouse trap

Make from plastic, can be mass produced by injection molding. Can catch four mice per setup. Come with re-usable bait. Safe for kits and pets.

Higher cost Plastic is not an environmental friendly material.

Existing Designs
Gravity Trap Design

Pros Very low cost, just use paper Suitable for DIY Simple design. Very safe for kids and pets. Disposable. Use Infrared and Ultrasonic sensor to detect presence of mouse. Pneumatic cylinder produces very high force to kill the mouse.

Cons Only catch one mouse each setup. Cannot be deployed near the mouse hole. The effectiveness is questionable. Over-engineered design. High cost. Need air supply. Need battery power. Only catch one mouse per setup. The effectiveness of Ultrasonic sensor is questionable. The effectiveness is questionable. If the mouse is small and light weight, this device might not work well. Difficult to place the bait. If mouse is vigilant and paranoid, it might not take the risk to bite the bait.

The Better mouse trap

Bottle mouse trap

Simple design: use a bottle to trap mouse. Low cost. Safe for kids and pets. Re-usable setup. Suitable for DIY. Very low cost. Very easy to setup. Able to catch many mice. Able to re-use the setup.

Roller mouse trap

After compared the various mouse trap designs, we had come out our own design ideas base on the features from mind map diagram and existing designs. Design ideas are presented below in simple hand sketches:

Brainstorming Ideas 1. Spring-roll Mouse trap

As you can see from above illustration, this mouse trap utilizes a winder shape plastic sheet to catch the mouse, when the trigger is activated by mouse body weight, the winder will transform back to its original shape and wrap on mouse in milliseconds.

2. Tetrahedron Mouse Trap - Design inspired by the hinge of shampoo bottle cover.

This trap is made from plastic part with six hinges which can store energy when the device is flattened, it will be unstable at this condition, and once mouse enters the center position, the weight of mouse will cause the hinges flipped to stable position, and the three doors will be closed to trap the mouse.

3. Open-house Mouse Trap

This more advanced mouse trap has the following good features: It uses industrial flavor enhancers or essential oil instead of real baits like peanut butter or meat to attract mouse, the flavor enhancers is constantly heated up to release the smell. Partially of the power supply is from solar panel, so that the device can be selfsustainable for long period of time without user attention. When mouse enters the house, it will be detected by IR detector, and it will be electrocuted immediately, then the flipping door will open to drop the mouse body down to a container, once the container is full, the LED indicator will light up. The container is capable to hold up to 5~10 mouse bodies. The opening of the hole is big enough to only allow mouse to enter, so that small cats and dogs will not be killed unexpectedly. This device is mainly made from recycle material, so it is low-cost and environmentalfriendly.

Selection of Ideas After discussion, we decide what is the must-have and good-to-have features for the mouse trap design as follow: Must-have features: Able to catch or kill mouse. Will not hurt kids or pets. High reliability. Easy to setup / user-friendly. Hygienic. Good-to-have features: Can catch or kill multiple mice. Maintenance-less, self-sustainable. Low cost Stylish design. Able to kill cockroach and gecko too.

Here we compared the 3 different design concepts as follow: Ideas

Spring-roll mouse trap

Pros Simple design. Easy to setup. Low cost. Disposable. Material used is recyclable. Low cost Easy to setup. Kill mouse in 3 seconds with high voltage. Safe for kids and pets. Can store up to 10 mice. Easy to clean up and deploy. Equipped with status indicators.

Cons Difficult to clean up after use. Dangerous for kids or pets who might mis-trigger it. Only catch one mice each time Only catch one mouse each time. Maybe not reliable.

Tetrahedron mouse trap

Open-house mouse trap

High price. Need to use battery.

Base on above information, here is the decision matrix to determine which design concept will be selected as final design: Decision Matrix Ranking Criteria Innovativeness Appearance User-friendly Production Cost Reliability Functionality Carbon Foot-print Total Score Ranking Possible Points 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 Spring-Roll Mouse Trap 8 3 3 5 5 2 8 34 Tetrahedron Mouse Trap 5 3 3 10 2 2 10 35 Open-house Mouse Trap 5 8 8 2 8 10 2 43

The result of decision matrix shows the open-house mouse trap design is the best remedy; hence we started detail design based on that concept.

DETAILED DESIGN Overview of Design

Innovative Features 1. LED display and Buzzer on the casing The LED light will indicate number of mouse has been caught. When the container is full, the LED will blink to remind user to dispose mouse bodies. A buzzer is installed and when a mouse is caught, buzzer starts to buzz to remind user.

Buzzer

LED

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2.

Multiple entrances

Compared with normal mouse trap which comes with only one entrance, the mouse trap we designed has three entrances. Mice from any direction can easily get into the trap and be caught.

Entrance 3

Entrance 2

Entrance 1 3. Smell attraction Instead using food to attract pest, team has decide use the essential oil that contains the smell of food to attract mouse. There will be a low power resistant-heater built in to help smell spreads further to attract pest. This function is specially designed for the cold area and it will be turned off when necessary to extend the battery life.

Smell Release Head

Built in heater

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4.

Use recycle material for casing

Nowadays many packaging material have been discarded after use for once. In order to reduce carbon foot-print and reduce the cost of trap, our mouse trap uses the recycle package for the casing. Currently, only the cooking oil package can be used, team will study on other recyclable material for casing.

Cut

5. Sealed drawer for easy dispose The gap between container and casing is sealed by soft rubber and magnet which is similar to refrigerator door design. This feature prevents the smell of the dead pest spread into atmosphere. The container has an additional layer, which contained dehumidifier and sterilizer to prevent mouse body from rotten under tropical climate.

6. One way entrance

Rubber Seal

The entrance of this mouse trap is one-way only, this function is realized by flexible plastic sheets arranged in such a way that mouse can be easily enter in one direction and almost impossible to escape. This feature is useful when the battery runs ou.

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7. Flipper design The flipper has two functions: a) Conduct high voltage to electrocute the mouse trapped inside the device, b) It is driven by motor, to be opened and let the mouse body drop to container after kill the mouse. The motor, sensor, LED, Buzzer are controlled by microprocessor.

Flipper closed

Flipper Opened

Microprocessor Li-ion Polymer Battery

PRODUCTION OF DESIGN The main structures are made by sheetmetal which is easy for mass production and low cost for manufacturing. To ensure the cost of the product is viable before it is launched to the market, we have taken the following steps in cost reduction: To source for cheaper raw materials. Accurate sale forecast where mass production can take place accordingly. To use recyclable materials where appropriate.

DISTRIBUTION, SALE, USAGE Distribution of product: 24 hour convenience store like 7-11 to maximize the accessibility to all customers. Supermarkets like Carrefour, Giant and NTUC Fairprice. Neighborhood convenience stores.

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Sale of the product: Estimated cost of production is $55.00 per piece Estimated selling price of device is $90.00 per piece

OBSOLESCENCE Our product has the following features: Can be scraped at end of useful life. All the parts can be recycled. The amount of wastage at the end of useful life is minimal.

CONCLUSION This report described innovative mouse trap device; it has the following unique features: It is easy to operate, no need to re-setup each time before trapping, just deploy the device at the place where user needs like farm, house or outdoor. Auto-reminding system to inform user when needs to dispose the trapped mouse. User can select either LED or buzzer alarms for reminding function. For productivity aspect, it is able to trap 5 or more mouse in one setup and there is a built in smell-bait to attract mouse enter the device which eliminates replace of baits. For safety aspect, the device is fully enclosed and the opening size only allow pest like mouse to enter. For hygienic aspect, because there is no exposure of dead pest into open air, there will be no environment pollution. The dead mice can be easily disposed by using the container located at the bottom of device.

During working on this project, we applied design methodology learnt from GEK1532T module; we also had better understanding on the importance of innovativeness in engineering design from different aspects, like how it improves productivity and help peoples life better. In term of how to implement innovativeness by open-minded, this project is a good practice for us to follow up the overall product design life cycle and let us have better understanding on the design methodologies described in the lecture notes.

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APPENDIX-ASSEMBLY AND PART DRAWINGS

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