Measurement push and pull forces on automatic liquid dispensers

Abstract

Since the COVID-19 pandemic, automated liquid dispensers have been increasingly developed to assist transmission prevention. However, data availability of automatic liquid dispenser mechanism's technical characteristics is not yet widely available. This causes frequent over or under design in its development. Therefore, we specifically measure push and pull forces engineering characteristics generated by the automatic liquid dispenser mechanism. A wire mechanism-based automatic liquid dispenser apparatus was used to experiment. A load-cell sensor was used to detect the force that occurs from a servo motor controlled by a microcontroller. The force data (push and pull) will be sent directly to the database server cloud with a recording frequency of every second. Three types of fluid treatment levels are used i.e. water, liquid soap, and hand sanitizer gel. Three types of fluid volume treatment levels used were 50 ml, 150 ml, and 250 ml. Each treatment level combination is carried out at the servo motors rotation steps 180°, 150°, 120°, 90°, 60°, and 30°. The results show that no significant differences were found in maximal forces required to release the water, liquid soap, and hand-sanitizer gel. It is also known that the volume of the fluid has a very significant effect on the amount of push and pull forces generated.