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Automatic Wire Weaving Machine

In January of 2020, I traveled to Colombia with two other students to conduct field work in partnership with D-Lab at MIT and C-Innova (a local NGO). Our goal was to help smallholder farmers build more effective and sustainable agricultural technologies. We arrived in Bogota then journeyed to the rural San Antonio village in Boyacá. After we were exposed to the needs of the community members and life on the farm, the project our team chose to work on was a mesh-weaving machine to make fences. The purpose of this machine is to make mesh using wire to fence off areas of the farm. This fence was then intended to be used for a system known as “agroecology,” which promotes increased self-sustainability for farmers, reducing their dependence on outside resources. When we arrived, a version of the machine already existed, but it utilized a manual crank system and had a very high error rate. It required two to three people to run the machine and took about an hour to make just one meter of fence. Our goal was to automate the machine using a motor and reduce the error rate to make the process more efficient and bring down the number of workers required to run it. Below are some before and after images of the machine we worked on.

Before
After

We worked collaboratively with local community members using a method of co-creation. The process consisted of men, women, and children coming together to contribute their input on the design. People were eager to take part in the experience and start making changes. The children enjoyed learning how to use the power tools and helped implement the new ideas we gathered. Our changes to the machine consisted of three main sections: automating the system with a motor and switch, adding a rolling mechanism to wrap the completed fence around a rod, and implementing a curved guiding tube to make the wire more evenly spaced to reduce the error rate.

In addition to automating the wire-weaving machine, we hosted hands-on workshops to teach community members of all ages about low-cost solar technologies. They demonstrated an interest in this topic because long-term power outages are a common issue there. Our three-hour workshops consisted of a lecture-based introduction to electronics, a hands-on activity to get familiar with circuits, a soldering tutorial, and the main activity: the assembly of the solar-powered phone chargers.

Check out our blog post about the trip!

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