Senior Project
Spring 2017
OLEDWorks LLC in Rochester, NY develops and manufactures affordable OLED (Organic Light Emitting Diode) lighting. For my senior design project, I was assigned to work with a team of four engineering students to design and fabricate a testing device to electrically and optically test two different orientations of OLED panels early in the manufacturing process. The new device took the adjustment time between tests down from up to an hour to just seconds.
How It Works
During the manufacturing process, OLED panels are mounted on sheets of glass in two different orientations/sizes. These sheets are placed in the top of the device (With the OLED material facing down) and held down with a transparent door to allow for visual inspection. Spring loaded test pins were used to run electricity through the edges of the OLED lights. A mechanical slider allows the user to quickly switch between two pin layouts, allowing to test both orientations of lights. Operated by a switch and a button, the device drives the circuit board and pin assembly upwards to contact the edges of the OLED lights, allowing them to be tested. Three stepper motors with threaded rods, a microcontroller, and a series of endstops, Once the lights are illuminated, they can be inspected for brightness, dark spots and other flaws in the material.
Software Used
Seimens NX was used to develop concepts and design parts/assemblies
NX was used to perform FEA to make sure parts would not fail under loads with desired materials/design
Arduino Software (C++ code) was used to program stepper motors, endstops, and buttons/switches
Hardware Used
CNC Machine was used (with gcodes made in NX) to manufacture complex parts
Machine shop tools were used to cut, drill, and finish parts made of wood, metal, and PVC
GD&T Standards were researched and followed to make sure tightly tolerance parts fit, slid, and rotated properly
Stepper motors, endstops, buttons, and power supply were wired to and controlled by a BIQU Rumba microcontroller
During the manufacturing process of OLED lights, the panels are laid out on glass in two orientations (Shown to the right). The glass sheets house either six square OLED panels or thirty small rectangular ones. The panels are tested by running an electric current through the edges of each square/ rectangle. Our goal was to make a device that could easily be switched between testing the two orientations.
Spring loaded pins were used to conduct electricity from circuit boards to the edges of the OLED panels. Pressure could only be applied to the edges of the lights, so the layout of the pins had to be changed completely between testing the two different OLED layouts. The video below shows the mechanism designed to switch between the two sets of pins. The handle slides in and out, changing which pattern of pins would contact the OLED lights.
