Building this project took me to a whole new learning experience, starting from experimenting with the characteristics of the messy ferrofluid, assembling the XY plotter from scratch, building the enclosure and glass display, mapping co-ordinates received from the camera sensor to the stepper motors, and finally testing and putting everything together. Along the process, came several issues. One of the main issues I had was with the electromagnets. I wanted the user to observe the transition of the ferrofluid from liquid to spikes. Using an electromagnet, the on/off control is possible. Several electromagnets I purchased were not generating the pull intensity needed to create the spikes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Future Work Considerations

For future work, I plan on continuing experimenting with different hardwares such as the Kinect and Leap Motion to handle the motion tracking and determine which works best with this project.

Another idea is to build a maze inside the tank. The ferrofluid will push a light-weight ball around to get from one side of the tank to the other with obstacles in between.

 

 

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank all for making this project possible:

• Prof. Cory Einbinder – my technical advisor
• Prof. Zevensuy Rodriguez – my mentor
• Brooklyn Research – for sharing their personal space, tools, and shop to work on my project
• Prof. Chloe Smolarski – my culmination advisor
• Prof. Ryoya Terao – my culmination advisor

 

Also for all the help and support:

• Darya Dubouskaya
• Xue Min Pan
• Mike Rinaldi
• Vincent Gil
• Rudy Guerrero
• Entire MTEC students and faculty at CityTech