Some people like to kick off their weekend with a beer in hand. Others prefer assembling 40 fuel cells. Why not both? Call it a General Assembly Meeting, if you will—except instead of bureaucracy, we had soldering irons and instead of endless discussions, we had screws. Lots of them.
Today, Theresa, Burghard, Leander, Livia, René, and Alexandra gathered at the Chair of Manufacturing Engineering, grabbed a couple of drinks, and got to work.
The Backstory (a.k.a. The Long and Winding Road to here)
It all started with a simple idea: let’s get some funding and build Open Fuel Cells (OFCs). We applied for a few thousand euros from the support association of the University of Dusiburg-Essen, which was the easy part. Then came the real work.
We sent what felt like a gazillion emails to our friends in startups and SMEs, hunting for people who could manufacture our OFC components—preferably without breaking the bank. After some serious number crunching, we realized we could afford components for 40 fuel cells. Jackpot!
Shoutout to our manufacturers, who made these components:
| Component | Manufacturer |
| End plates | CoCreation Lab of the Universits of Duisburg-Essen |
| Flowfields | Schwind Elektronik |
| MEAs | Hydrogenea |
| Gaskets | ZBT |
Then came the waiting game. Weeks passed. Finally, all the parts arrived, and we set a date: a Friday afternoon assembly session. Nothing like ending the week with some good old-fashioned manual labor.
The Assembly Party
And so, we found ourselves sitting around stacks of components, tools in hand, assembling cells like a team of highly specialized mechanics. Here’s what went down:
- Soldering current collectors onto circuit boards
- Screwing an unreasonable number of screws into end plate (René: Do we really need that many screws. Burghard: Yes.)
- Lining up MEAs onto gaskets and flow fields
- Cutting GDL material (turns out, cutting straight is harder than it looks)
A bit of chaos? Sure. A few minor assembly mishaps? Of course.
So, how many cells did we actually manage to assemble?
(Reminder: The goal was 40.)
Well, we have FIVE now.
[TO BE CONTINUED.. I guess. *sigh*]
