The Optical Revolver: Final Design Review Team Orange

Griffin Beemiller Mate 340.360 Dr. Savage & Dr. London 12/3/10

Introduction The cones in the human eye are sensitive to color which is measured in chromaticity values corresponding to a two dimensional color scheme. Cathode Ray Tube TVs (CRTs) emit a spectrum of wavelengths of light that are most recognizable to the human eye . A client has asked Team Orange to create a system that will filter the light transmitted from a tungsten halogen light bulb with absorbance and dichroic filters; both with red, green and blue separate color values. Team Orange has since researched, fabricated, and tested a Light Measurement System (LMS) with an easy to use Revolver design. The LMS is a tool used in industry to measure quantitative color values of light filters in order to ensure that the filtered light spectrum reflects the true color value of red, green, and blue (RGB). These true colors are necessary to produce the multi colored screens in many LCD screens and countless other applications in which these three basic colors produce a vast spectrum of colors.
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User Needs The need of the client was determined to be a holder for RGB plastic filters as well as three dichotic filters. This holder needed to be a sturdy base that will be stable enough for long term reproducibility of .1% and also simple enough to use for quick and easy repeatability of .04% in less than 5 seconds. The base must be easy enough to use efficiently on an assembly line. The measured chromaticity values from the LMS must be comparable to the chromaticity values produced by LCD pixels designed with back-lighted filters . This base must have a fiber optic connection that will connect to a quartz halogen lamp, filter the light, and send the light to a spectrometer. The base must therefore have fiber optic connections before and after the light filtration. The LMS base must be under $500 and had to be designed and fabricated in less than 10 weeks.
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Design of Base The prototyped base was made out of A356 cast aluminum alloy, which will be discussed later in the metallurgical analysis of the casting, and the wheel was rapid prototyped made of acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS) . Lenses and lens columns were purchased and positioned at the fiber optic connections in order to columnize the incoming light and refocus the filtered light back into the second fiber optic cable. A system block diagram of this process can be seen in Figure 1. Alignment of the light beams through the base is critical. The fiber optic cables must transmit as much light as possible with minimal light loss on the surface of the end of the cable. For this reason extensive polishing was done on the surface of each end of the cables. Upon connecting the fiber optic to the base, the columnizer lens is perfectly aligned in order to parallelize the light rays and later refocus the rays back into the fiber optic cable on the other side of the base. This process can be seen in Figure 2.
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Figure 1: This system level block diagram above displays the principle components of the LMS and was used to schematically determine the best design based on functional requirements

Figure 2: This figure expresses how crucial the alignment of the lenses is in order to focus the light rays accurately into the optic cable on the right side of the figure. For this reason the light exit column must be adjustable in order to put the cable connection precisely at the focal length of the lens.

Our decision came down to choosing between two simple bases. One design shown in Figure 3 is the DropIn design where different the different filters would be simply dropped in through the top of the base. The slot would be just big enough for the holder with a tolerance of 0.1 under the assumption that any extra space would run the risk of light loss. Our other design shown in Figure 4 involves a rotating wheel that holds the three plastic filters so that the change in color filtration can be done simply and easily. The original design involved the wheel spinning freely with 3 notches on the edge of the wheel to catch a small piece of spring steel and hold it in place. Upon fabrication of the components it was realized that the friction between the A356 base and the ABS wheel is high enough for the wheel to be stuck in place without spin. This friction fit increases stability of the design allowing for minimal movement when obtaining color values.

(Hand drawn sketch)

(Hand drawn sketch)

Figure 3: The sketch above shows the top view of the basic design for the Drop-In Filter Holder. They cylindrical filter holder would be simply dropped into place from the top of the base.

Figure 4: The sketch above shows the top view of the Revolver Filter Holder. This design requires only the spin of a wheel to change to a different colored filter, and the replacement of the wheel to filter with dichroic filters.

Design Solution Choosing Revolver Given the functional requirements of the LMS and the components of the system, the decision matrix between the two designs was determined using weighting factors
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for each attribute which can be

seen in Table I. The table shows the different attributes considered in the design of the LMS base and their respective weighting factors and the collaborative score that each design received from Team Orange. The respective values were added up and totaled at the bottom of the table. Note that the DropIn Design won by a value of only 0.4 A sensitivity analysis was conducted by changing the weighting factors yet the Drop-In base still won indicating insensitive results. Although the drop in design scored higher in the decision matrix, the decision was made to fabricate the revolver design for the following reasons. 1. Team Orange would become more familiar with the ABS rapid prototyper 2. The revolver better meets the loading and measuring time requirements 3. The design is more user friendly and ergonomic 4. Reduces possible operator errors that may occur 5. Reduces the chance of damaging the lens from mishandling The revolver design solution meets and exceeds the expectations of the client in that the light sources gets filtered with any of the six filters with a high ease of use. The revolving filter mechanism allows only fractions of a second to change the filter color between single chromatic filters and less than 30 seconds to switch in the dichroic filter wheel. A disadvantage of the revolver is that it requires more ABS parts which cost more money, but it was later realized that the ABS parts were not of too high cost. Table I: Conceptual Design Decision Matrix
Drop-In LMS Attribute/Criteria Operation Stability Ergonomics Safety Manufacturability Cost Schedule Measureable Objectives No light loss; maintain calibration; easy loading Rpt. .4; Repro. 0.1 against RGB filters Compact as Possible Shielded power supply; non toxic materials Prototypability; must be cast $500 10 weeks Score 8.7 9 8.2 10 9.5 9 9.8 Weight 0.15 0.3 0.05 0.05 0.1 0.15 0.2 Value 1.31 2.7 0.41 0.5 0.95 1.35 1.96 9.2 Revolver LMS Score 9.2 8.7 9.3 9.7 8.3 7.7 9.3 Weight 0.15 0.3 0.05 0.05 0.1 0.15 0.2 Value 1.38 2.61 0.47 0.49 0.83 1.16 1.86 8.8

Problems and Solutions The original design concept involved one wheel, and the removal of the three plastic filters and their holders to place the dichroic filters holders in the wheel with a friction fit. When a problem arose with a CAD dimensioning mistake for the rapid prototyped wheel, the decision was made to friction fit the filters in the wheel without the filter holders, shown in Figure 5, (saving us money at $17 dollars each filter) and make another ABS wheel with larger diameter holes to hold the diachronic filter holders. What was at first design problem turned out to lower our overall cost of the prototype and make our device more user friendly by having two separate wheels for plastic and for dichroic filters. Another problem that was determined was crucial alignment of the lens columns. This problem was solved with 5 set screws for one column with low stability, and 2 for the other, slightly more stable column. The set screws worked perfectly with low cost and high effectiveness. The final design can be seen in Figure 6 A and B and the drawings for these parts can be seen at the end of the report.

Figure 5: The picture on the left shows the single wavelength filter wheel and the red green and blue plastic filters that are placed in the wheel flush with the flat surface with a friction fit. The revolver is made of ABS (acrylonitrile butadiene styrene) and will be placed in the aluminum base and held in place by its cylindrical spokes. The second ABS wheel for the dichroic filters will have larger diameter holes for the dichroic lens holders.

Figure 6A: This computer generated picture depics the LMS base in an exploded view. Positioning of the filter holder and lens columns are evident in this picture

Figure 6B: This picture shows a view of the completed LMS base. A set screw can be seen on top of the base holding one of the lens columns in position.

Detailed Design Specs

Light Source o Spectrum: 360 to 1100 nm o o Visual spectrum: 380-680 nm

SMA 905 fiber optic connector 1 mW/cm @ 550 nm

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Filter Holder o o Utilize ThorLabs SM05 holders Hold 0.5 (12 mm diameter) lens o Edmund Optics NT43-936/930/942 ThorLabs FD1A

4 x 4 x 4 max. dimensions

Wavelength Sorting/Light Detection o o o o o CCD imaging detector 100 photons/count @ 550 nm 600 g/mm grating 350-1000 nm spectral range 25 m entrance slit Resolution: 1.5 nm FWHM

Spectral Analysis o Utilize SpectraSuite Plots Counts vs. Wavelength & % Transmission vs. Wavelength Integration time of 4 ms Export data to Excel Spreadsheet

Testing Prototype The standard operating procedures of Team Oranges LMS require the system to be assembled carefully following the SOPs. Once the system is set up properly, its then calibrated with 100% transmission and with 0% transmission . The color values of each filter were then obtained with a software program called SpectraSuite used with a calibrated spectrometer. When collecting data, Team Orange took five measurements over a period of one hour to obtain specs on the LMSs repeatability as well as five measurements per day over a period of 5 days to test the reproducibility of the system.
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Results and Color Analysis The results of the testing of the repeatability and reproducibility of the system were used in a one sample t test comparing our measured color values against the standard
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CRT phosphors values. These

values failed the test indicating that the colors of the absorbance filters did not match those of the CRT phosphors. Although the dichroic color values obtained did match those of the 2009 dichroic values, all but one of Team Oranges dichroic chromaticity values did not match the dichroic standard values. Table II shows the standard deviation of the absorbance filters chromaticity values against their standard color values. The table shows an extremely low standard deviation for both Team Oranges repeatability and reproducibility. This data depicts the good precision of Team Oranges system, though the accuracy of

the system is not as good as desired. This lack of accuracy can be attributed to one of many things including calibration of the filter and spectrometer.

Table II: Standard Deviation of Measured Chromaticity Values

Blue Avg Green Avg Red Avg Total Avg Client requirement
Project Plan and Cost Analysis

Repeatability (1 Hr) Std Reproducability Dev (5 day) Std Dev 0.0016167 0.00145 0.001235 0.0017 0.0055 0.0034 0.00275 0.00215 <.04 <.1

The tasks that have been completed can be seen in Table III. This table depicts the total number of man hours that were required to complete each task. These hours are totaled at the bottom to 93 hours. These hours equate to $9,300 of labor required to complete the LMS. The tasks have approximate start and finish dates and dependencies on other tasks. A Gantt chart of the tasks can be seen in Figure 7. As you can see from the chart, the production of the LMS was effectively completed in less than 10 weeks. The bill of materials can be seen in Table IV and it should be noted that Team Orange remained well under the $500 budget Table III: Total Man Hours for Completion

Task

Description 1 Finish all models in SolidWorks 2 Updated parts list 3 Purchase parts 4 RPT mold 5 Pour metal into mold 6 Heat Treating 7 Check specifications on Al base 8 ABS wheel 9 Make fiber optic cables 10 Assemble system 11 Testing Total Man Hours

Man Hours 7 2 1 1 6 9 1 1 12 18 35 93 8

Name Ian Charlie Charlie Griffin All W,C,I Will Griffin M,W,C,J All All

Dependency

FS 1 FS 4 FS 5 FS 5 FS 1 FS 3 FS 6, 7, 8, 9 FS 10

Finish all models in SolidWorks Updated parts list Purchase parts RPT mold Pour metal into mold Heat Treating Check specifications on Al base ABS wheel Make fiber optic cables Assemble system Testing 13-Sep 23-Sep 3-Oct 13-Oct 23-Oct 2-Nov 12-Nov 22-Nov 2-Dec

Figure 7: The Gantt Chart above depicts relative time for each task to be completed in days. Note that all tasks are complete within the 10 week period

Table IV: Bill of Materials: Parts List

Part ABS Rapid Prototyping Al 356, Casting Alloy Zcast 501 Powder/Binder Multimode AMP 905 Connector Polishing Pads Epoxy for Fiber Optic Connections SMA Bulkhead Adapter 3 cc Epoxy Syringe UV/VISmulti-mode optical fiber Furcation tubing (orange) Lenses (BK7) Plano-convex SMA-ST Fiber Optic Cable Lens Holder, .5" Adjustable Lens Holder, ,5" Retaining Ring, .5" ST to SMO5 Adaptor 1" Filter Holder Retaining Ring, 1"

Price ($) Quantity Total ($) 10 1.52 15.2 4.1 0.635 2.6035 0.15 968.8 145.32 9.95 4 39.8 1 1 1 3.75 2 7.5 15 0 0 1.25 2 2.5 7 2 14 1.5 2 3 22.5 2 45 165 0 0 15.3 2 30.6 28.6 0 0 5.1 4 20.4 24 2 48 12.16 0 0 5.3 0 0 $374.9235

Metallurgical Analysis of Casting Mold Design The design of the casting involved decision making on numerous design specifications including: casting orientation, position of parting line, wall thickness of casting, wall thickness of mold, and size and positioning of gates and risers. It was determined that the tightest tolerances needed to be held at the top of the casting, therefore it was oriented upside down so that the liquid would flow first to the most intricate parts of the casting. The parting line was positioned so that the lens columns were on the same side of the parting line to avoid misalignment of the column holes. The risers of the casting were placed on the top of the mold intended to compensate for any shrinkage that occurred during the solidification process. The design of the casting was computer generated using SolidWorks. The inversion of the casting allowed us to design the mold; the team later realized that material reduction of the mold should have been focused on at this point due to the high cost of the z-cast sand and binder. Instead material reduction of the aluminum was accounted for, in turn costing Team Orange more money on high-priced z-cast[7]. Casting Process In preparation for the cast, the z-cast mold was placed into a metal tray with clay all around the bottom. Clay was then packed tightly around all bottom edges of the mold inside of the tray to avoid any outflow of liquid A356 from the inside of the mold. During the cast, the crucible containing the liquid A356 aluminum alloy was quickly and carefully removed from the furnace and poured into the gating of the mold. Once all of the liquid had been poured, the casting was left to cool at room temperature for 24 hours. After the cast it was apparent that
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the risers of our casting should have had a larger diameter to prevent quick solidification in the risers. This resulted in the bottom of our casting, but the top of our LMS base, to have some shrinkage. Luckily this shrinkage played no part in the mechanical performance of our LMS base. The as cast microstructure of one riser can be seen in Figure 8 A and B at a magnification of 100x and 500x respectively.

Proeutectic (Al)

Proeutectic (Al)

Eutectic Comp.

Eutectic Si phase

Eutectic (Al)

Figure 8A: The 50 micron bar seen in the bottom right of this unetched microstructure expresses the low magnification of the picture. In this as cast microstructure, the proeutectic (Al) phase can be seen in the lighter areas, where the darker areas are made up of eutectic composition of (Al) and an [8] unidentified Si phase.

Figure 8B: In this higher magnification unetched microstructure the proeutectic (Al) phase is much more evident. The darker regions are a combination of two eutectic phases. These eutectic phases do not follow a lamellar structure since the casting was not [8] equilibrium cooled.

Heat treatment (T6) The aluminum base underwent a T6 heat treatment in which the aluminum alloy was solutionized at a temperature of 540C for 12 hours. At this point of the heat treatment process the aluminum phase becomes supersaturated with Silicon particles. The casting was then removed from the furnace and quenched immediately into room temperature water. This quench trapped the supersaturated solid solution at room temperature, keeping the composition of vacancies which isnt

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otherwise available at room temperature. After the quench the casting was artificially aged for 12 hours at a temperature of 155C and was then removed from the furnace and quenched again to room temperature[8]. During the artificial aging process, the silicon particles in the supersaturated solution begin to diffuse out of Aluminum solvent and form precipitates. Although these precipitates are so small that they cannot be seen without a Transmission Electron Microscope (TEM), the microstructure of this heat treated alloy can be seen in Figure 9 A and B at 100x and 500x respectively.

(Al) (Al)

(Si) (Si)

Figure 9A: In this unetched low magnification microstructure of the A356-T6 casting, the Aluminum lattice can be seen in the light regions, which are rich in precipitates that are too small to be seen. The darker regions are the Si rich phase which has spherodized and become equiaxed, which is indicative of a heat treatment.

Figure 9B: This unetched higher magnification picture shows a close view of the spherodized silicon rich phase. The Silicon particles have diffused through the Aluminum lattice and combined into the equiaxed grains shown. As previously stated the silicon precipitates cannot be seen in the (Al) lattice at this magnification

The casting A356 has a composition of 7% Silicon and .3% Mg[8]. As you can see in the Aluminum Silicon phase diagram in Figure 10, even at elevated temperatures the maximum solubility of Silicon in the (Al) phase is ~1.65%. This means that even when supersaturated there is still at least 5.35 wt% Si in its own unidentified silicon phase that would require further research to identify. Though this may seem like low solubility of Silicon in the (Al) phase, it is

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much more than that soluble at room temperature, since there is a decreasing solubility of Si in (Al) with decreasing temperature. During the heat treatment, at high temperatures this silicon phase becomes spherodized.

Figure 10: In the phase diagram to the right, the red line is representative of 7 wt% Silicon, the composition of A356. The .3 wt% Mg is negligible, therefore this phase diagram can be considered. Notice should be taken to the decreasing solubility of Si in (Al) with decreasing temperature. This is what allows precipitation hardening to occur.

After the heat treatment process, the hardness of the as-cast riser and the heat treated riser were compared in order to determine quantitatively if the heat treatment process produced an increase in strength. The HRB scale was used when measuring the hardness of the precipitation hardened alloy, but the average of these values was later converted to the HRE scale, which was used for the as-cast sample; a scale for softer metals. The comparison of these values can be seen in Table V. Though the heat treatment has a higher standard deviation, it is evident by the average hardness value that the hardness of the casting doubled after the T6 heat treatment. Since hardness is the resistance to plastic deformation, it can be concluded that through the heat treatment our casting had a large increase in strength.

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Table V: As-Cast Hardness vs T6 Heat Treatment

As Cast (HRE) 43.85 36.2-51.3 6.6 T6 Heat treatment (HRE) (HRB) 88 51.9 N/A 34.2-81.6 N/A 14.3

Average Range Std Dev

References

1. "Cathode Ray Tube." Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Web. 06 Dec. 2010. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cathode_ray_tube>.
2. Edmund Cast Plastic Color Filters, Blackboard 3. Uprint Specifications, Blackboard 4. Conceptual Design Decision Matrix (nps46E2.tmp) 5. Diffraction Gratings: Technical information, Blackboard 6. ASTM E308 Standard Practice for Computing the Colors of Objects by Using the CIE System (npsE8FB.tmp) 7. Z-cast 501 Direct Metal Casting. Design Guide, Blackboard

8. ASM Handbook. Cal Poly Library <http://products.asminternational.org.ezproxy.lib.calpoly.edu/matinfo/index.jsp>

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