Braxton Kyle Bensel
G#: 801101065
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Hey! My name is Braxton Bensel and this is my third semester as a Mechanical Engineer here at UNC Charlotte. I graduated from the Early College at Guilford and was a member of Team 1533, Triple Strange in the FIRST Robotics Competition program. Since I was young, robotics and mecchanical enginnering always seemed really awesome to me, and I've been chasing it non-stop ever since. I am a current Teaching Assistant for 1202, and have been for two semesters now. I'm thrilled to learn all about mechanical enginnering and move into a career marked by innovation, creation, and experimentation.
In the past 150 years, enginnering innovations have rapidly improved our quality of life. The internet has created new levels of innerconnectivity that weren't even imagined beforehand. The evolution of technology, specifically in terms of processors, is incredible. As we continue to push the limits of processing power we continue to find new methods of storing and processing information. Advancements in batteries have given us the ability to store energy on massive scales, and some of the newest innovations are making leaps and bounds in energy storage. Finally, the biomedical field is chugging towards a future where we will be able to produce any and all organs so that those who need new organs can get them. Perhaps in the future this will be fully realized.
Analysis of Design: The S-Bend
The S Bend was patented by Alexander Cumming in 1775, which greatly revolutionized toilets and their usage within homes.
The S-Bend works by simply adding a curve into the pipe of a toilet. This serves two unique purposes. Firstly, it prevents waste gasses from coming up through the pipe with it's vacuum seal. This makes the toilet a much more pleasant overall experience, especially within households. Secondly, the afforementioned vacuum seal allows for high-pressure flushing to occur when the lever is triggered. (And as a fun fact, Alexander Cumming also invented a clock for King George the Third.)
The curve is the core element of the S-Bend, and gives it it's functionality entirely. Toilets are made from clay moulding and is entirely automated. This link shows the process, which is super cool! The advantage of the toilet being clay moulded means that the unique pipe structure and circular features can be made without having any sort of seams to be created and then sealed. The S-Bend is such a robust creation that most toilets still use some variant of it today! Toilets are made all over the world- nobody really holds a monopoly on toilet manufacturing. There are locations in Africa, Asia and even the United States that all manufacture toilets.
My Idea
This upcoming semester, I want to take the time to make something truly revolutionary. However, I don't know if I have an idea that's truly revolutionary yet. In the meantime, I've got the perfect idea for COVID season. I want to design a small robot that will move around and deliver hand sanitizer to guests in my apartment. I hope for it to have it's own locomotion, be able to elevate to the average height of outstretched hands, and deliver hand sanitizer to the persons outstreched hands when it recognizes them. This will likely utilize vision processing, some standard drivetrain, and a peristaltic pump to deliver the hand sanitizer. Size is an important factor, so it would be nice if it extended to reach a person instead of naturally being ~4 feet tall.
All in all, I spent about an hour and a half on this assignment. The hardest part was thinking of an idea for my personal project.