Automated Brake Material Tester

This model was built to showcase the evolution of brakes from Leaf to Drum and to Disc. With this, I used it to test many different materials ranging from Chip Wood to High Quality Rubber as a way of showcasing which materials work the best for a disc brake system.

1. 2x4 wood
2. 1x4 wood
3. Ply wood
4. 3d Print
5. 1/8 Chip
6. Acrylic
7. Silicon
8. Foam
9. Foam Brush
10. Velcro
11. Wires
12. 4 digit display
13. Arduino Uno
14. Bread Board
15. Parallax Servo
16. DC motor
17. Bilda Motor
18. Bilda 12V Battery
19. Bilda Controller
20. Metal Framing
21. LED
22. Button
23. Fly Wheel

With a 25x9 piece of ply wood, screw into 2 2x4 pieces of wood that run along the long ends of the ply. This gives you a base to work off of. Next, find the middle of the wood and set that as your base point. From there screw a 7 1/2 inch 2x4 on top of the ply in the middle. Once that is on add another 10 inch piece of ply on top which has a 1x2 inch notch in the middle so u have a base for your brake system. Lastly, add a small 2.5 inch piece of ply to the opposite side of the big ply so u have a place to mount the dc motor.

For the motor, you need to use aluminum extruder frames to mount the motor to 3 inches above the ply. Next, right behind the motor, run the wires to a controller which is mounted into the corner of the ply and right next to it, the battery. This allows for less slack of wires with the motor and keeps it all on one side.

The wheel is is a large thin circle with a thicker smaller wheel. The idea of this was to create a track for the brakes to be applied and also to increase weight to the center. This will allow it to spin faster and give better data. To attach this to the motor, there is another piece that connects to the motor and slides into the fly wheel. With this all screwed together, you have the rotating wheel.

The servo is a linear actuator that will spin the servo and push a extension rod into the wheel. The whole system is 3d printed using the kit linked below. For this project you need to print the large set because the small servos dont have enough torque to stop the wheel.

The Motor is attached onto the small 2 inch ply wood behind the wheel. The wheel attachment to it should just run along the wheel allowing it to spin and create a voltage.

Kit: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3170748

In the arduino and bread board, you need wires, buttons, led, servo and motor attached. Below I will list where and why they will be linked up.

Led- Attatched to bread board with positive side going to a pin and the negative side attatched to a resistor going to ground.

Servo-the 3 wires need to be connected to power ground and pin. Black to ground, Red to Power, and White to Pin.

Button- One side of button needs to go to the celested pin and ground

Timer- timer has 4 wires, which are similar to the servo. Red and Brown to analog pins, white to groundand black to power

Motor- 2 wires that connect to a selected pin and ground

The images above show how to code the system so that the dc motor will spin along with the large wheel. This will send power to the pin it is connected to With that power, the arduino will turn the power towards the led that will turn on and begin the linear actuator and timer. Once this starts the linear actuator will push into the wheel and stop it. When the wheel is stopped, the timer will stop. The buttons are coded so when it is done and data is taken, then you can push buttons to reset the system.

The data is collected by taking multiple tests of different materials and using the timer to see which material is performing the best on average. In the image above there is a spread sheet format of how to make the table. Also above is a example video of what a singular test would look like. You can add any amount of tests. (The more tests, the better the data)