Manufacturing in Phnom Penh by Purva Juvekar

During winter and spring quarter 2017, my teammates and I (Team WASHOut) designed a sanitation station using a Biosand Filter. This was our effort towards providing clean water to students in floating schools on the Tonle Sap lake. We were provided with the opportunity to go to Cambodia and implement our project in person through the Blum grant, and we worked with Wetlands Work!, our clients for the senior design class.

Figure 1 Rendering of Sanitation Station

 We spent our time at UC Davis designing the station – sketches, CAD models, renderings, dimensions, engineering analysis and testing. We made a prototype in Davis, which we showed during the Senior Design Showcase in June, to test flow rates and water quality standards. The next step was to take the design to Phnom Penh and manufacture it there. We got to work as soon as we got there. My teammate and I were introduced to people on the WW! team who could help with translation, and we began scouting the city to find metal fabricators. Our filter is made from stainless steel, and we found a shop which could make the necessary sheet metal bends and welds to make a container. 

Figure 2 Making the Prototype

Figure 3 Completed Prototype

Figure 4 Team WASHOut at Senior Design Showcase

Figure 5 One of the Metal Fabrication Shops in Phnom Penh

We also wanted to make a pump which would help bring water from the lake underneath the schools into the filter reservoir. We decided to use a design we found on Instructables, which was cheap and the parts for which were easy to find…in the United States. Made almost entirely out of PVC, the pump exterior and piston PVC pipes were a breeze to find. It’s what went inside that sent us all around the city. O-rings for seals, which can be found anywhere here in the States, took us the longest time to find. Hour after hour, store after store, we were only presented with gaskets – until we found that one golden shop. We cut the PVC at the office, made other manufacturing cuts at a machine shop and glued everything together ourselves. We also needed a plug, which we couldn’t find anywhere. But our colleague knew exactly where to look, and we had someone fashion a plug for us out of a rubber pellet.

Figure 6 Pump We Wanted to Build

6 days after we placed the order, our casing was ready and delivered, and the pump took 3 days to build. I was glad we put in the effort that we did for the pump. I realized how resourceful the team I was working with was, and I had fun during the process.

Source: https://www.instructables.com/id/How-To-Make-A-PVC-Water-Air-Vacuum-Pump/