The 1-Month Flapping Test is DONE

The 1-month long durability flapping test of this actuator is officially finished. I tested 20 samples which where running at 15Hz. This means that each one made 1,296,000 per day or 40,176,000 flaps in total (i'm not sure if i will rate this at 15hz but i'm trying to accelerate the testing)

I learned alot from this test and the defects that came out. These are some of the failures i noticed:

- the aluminium stiffener's edge managed to cut into some of soldermask - this happened on all the samples. To fix this i'll be making 3 different modifications to the design - (1) make the diameter of the magnet-holder the same as the diameter of the coil (2) eliminate the top aluminium stiffener (3) cover the bottom soldermask with a very thin pi stiffener. I'll be testing these 3 options individually to know what works best

- Another failure that was observed was that part of the flex-arm got deformed. This happened because of the top aluminium edge (shown in the 3rd image) which i am now going to solve by eliminate the top aluminium stiffener and making the bottom one thicker

- One sample ended up with the magnet detached from the arm - i am not sure if this occurred because they were too close. In the next test i'll be testing bigger and thinner magnet - the increased surface area should held the adhesive keep the magnets more in place 

-1 sample got broken from flexing - hopefully the above mentioned improvements will fix this

I will order new pcbs soon and re-start the test asap. Apart from these new 3 samples i'm also testing another concept with 2 arms - which should perform better from a durability's perceptive. However, it will be more bulky and the short arm will also diminish the actuating angle