Transparent Drinking Bucket Fill Level Visibility
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing drinking buckets for animals, such as calves and lambs, require time-consuming inspections to check the fill level, which can be cumbersome and inefficient, especially when monitoring from a distance or outside the animal's enclosure.
Innovation Solution
A transparent drinking bucket made of polyolefin plastic with strategically placed openings for suction spigots and a marking clip, allowing fill level visibility without opening the bucket, reducing soiling and promoting longer sucking for better digestion, and enabling easy identification of liquid levels from a distance.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Loss of information
If the bucket wall is made opaque (milky-white plastic), then the bucket provides good mechanical stability and is cost-effective, but the fill level cannot be seen from the outside
Solution Approach 1:
The bucket wall is made transparent only in the specific area where fill level monitoring is needed, while other parts can remain opaque. This allows the bucket to maintain its mechanical stability and cost-effectiveness overall, while providing the necessary visibility function in the critical monitoring zone.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent utilizes the optical properties of materials by changing from opaque milky-white plastic to transparent plastic, enabling light transmission so that the fill level becomes visible from the outside without requiring additional monitoring devices.
2Ease of operation
If the bucket is made transparent, then the fill level is visible from outside, but the production cost increases and mechanical stability may be reduced
Solution Approach 1:
The transparent bucket wall enables the bucket to self-monitor its fill level without requiring external inspection devices or human intervention. The fill level information is automatically visible through the transparent wall, allowing farmers to quickly assess whether the bucket needs refilling without physical inspection.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent replaces the mechanical inspection process (opening the bucket, visually checking inside, closing the bucket) with an optical system where light passes through the transparent wall, allowing direct visual monitoring of the fill level from outside the bucket.
3Measurement precision
If farmers must physically inspect each bucket, then accurate fill level monitoring is possible, but significant time is lost especially when buckets are in enclosures
Solution Approach 1:
The transparent bucket wall acts as an intermediary that transmits visual information from the interior fill level to the exterior observer. This eliminates the need for physical access to the bucket interior while maintaining accurate fill level detection, saving time especially when buckets are mounted in enclosures or at hard-to-reach locations.
Data Source
Figure 1
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Figure 3A~3B
AI summary
A drinking bucket (TE) for watering animals, especially in the rearing of calves or lambs, is described, which has an opening in one bucket wall (EW) for receiving a teat plug (SZ) and has at least one opening (DB) on the side opposite the opening for attaching the drinking bucket, wherein the bucket wall is flattened on the side facing the opening and on the side facing the at least one opening, the drinking bucket is at least partially transparent, wherein the degree of transparency is chosen so that the fill level of a liquid in the drinking bucket is visible from the outside.