Automatic Washing Machine

To bring out a disruption in the low volume laundering market of washing machines for bachelors and single professionals for an affordable cost.

Introduction

Project: Sponsored project by the Department of Science and Technology (DST) for the Social Innovation Lab at IIIT Jabalpur during my third year.
Project Mentor: Prof. Puneet Tandon
My role: Team Lead, Ideation, 3D Visualisation, Prototyping, Testing, Documentation
Timeline: 3 months (From visualising project brief upto testing final product)
Team: Designers: Soumil SIngh Panwar, Sahil Kolgaonkar, Tanai Mathur, Ayushi Gupta

Engineers: Mohd. Abdul Ahad (Mechanical Engineer), Aman Singhal (Electronics Engineer)

Scope of work:

To come up with a frugal automatic washing solution targeted towards bachelors, students and other individuals with an independent lifestyle. The machine has to develop upon the following factors:
   1. Automatic
   2. Compact
   3. Minimal Interaction
   4. Elegant
   5. Low Cost
   6. Scope For Control Using Smartphone

Ideation

The following are a set of ideation sketches that led to the final concept.

Visualization + Product Renders

The explorations were brought to 3D using Rhinocerous and material detail done using Keyshot.

Storyboarding

Proof of Concept

A proper working prototype was made in stages to make sure this concept works as desired. This would also help to calibrate the cycle times and motor RPM to ensure the desirable wash quality. This would then be tested properly with excess load to represent an extreme use case and understand our limitations.

Prototype was made in three stages:
   1. Paper and sunboard hollow mockups to understand the ergonomics and proportions of the concept
   2. Mechanism representation using final components layed on a table representing flow direction of water, etc.
   3. Full scale working prototype using closest to real material to replicate the original product.