Blog#1 : 

Our team developed the idea for a small, lightweight, and easily maneuverable jack lift because one team member realized the current methods for moving furniture around one's home are inadequate for many people. Home furniture and appliances  on average range in weight from 150lb for a desk or dryer to almost 400lb for a refrigerator, and can fill a volume of space from 10 cubic feet to 30 respectively. In addition, there are many large, uniquely shaped, and heavy objects in people's homes such as fish tanks, tables, game machines, etc.. It is normal for people to want to shift large objects like these around their home to suit their needs and desires as they change over time. A common method for moving large furniture is to use a dolly, but it only has a mechanical advantage of 5. This advantage is not enough for many people, and the dolly is limited if the object has a large volume or a strange shape. The alternatives are to use more people, or hire someone which can cost anywhere from $40-$150 for an hour of work at the leading companies.

Jack lifts come in many varieties but none are suited for home use. Our current design combines systems from pallet jacks and toe jacks that when combined in an optimum fashion can solve this problem in a unique way. The main mechanism for lift is derived from the toe lift where a hydraulic cylinder pushes upwards on the top plate of a zig-zag shaped piece of metal which causes the bottom plate to lift an object. The base of the device will have four mecanum wheels that will allow for 4-directional mobility. This can be used by itself to lift one side of an appliance that is blocked on all other sides and slide it out from that position. Two devices can be used by placing them on either side of an object and by alternating the application of lift to each side, a single person can lift most home furniture and appliances. Also, it is possible to use more than two devices to lift an object that is very large or uniquely shaped; still by one’s self.

                            Figure 1: Draft Design Schematic for Our Device

A current challenge we encounter as we design our jack lift mechanism is finding a solution where the two devices can attach across the bottom of the object. We think the weight of the object and the friction on the device will be enough to keep them together so as to not slide out from underneath the object. However, we would feel much better providing a solution where they can securely attach to each other to guarantee the object locking in place. Another challenge is the increase in cost as our idea requires two individual jack lifts. Initially we were planning to design a device that would function similarly to how current pallet jacks work, but it would wedge underneath the object to be raised, then lift it up. This became an issue as we would be basically designing a pallet jack, so to be creative we decided a two jack lift system is a viable design, but seeing as it would require more material to construct, the cost will increase in designing two individual jack lifts that work in synchrony.

Figure 2: Example of a Pallet Jack

                  Figure 3: Example of a Toe Jack

For our other project idea, we are looking into designing a heated and cooled cushion for office chair applications. Our focus is on a system that can be built directly into cushioned chairs to offer a direct heating/cooling option. So far we have looked at a few different cooling solutions and thermoelectric cooling/heating using the Peltier method is the winner so far. By taking advantage of the Peltier method, we can combine heating and cooling by swapping the polarity to swap the hot and cold sides. We are looking to produce a cooling effect of about 150-250 watts in order to combat the heat output of the body which outputs about 100 watts of energy.