I am a high school student who have only basic background in engineering. I have just started a STEM project in school and not sure about what components should be purchased for my project.
The project is about building a portable sensing device which use to test the biting force of human. It can read and show the amount of force in an LCD display. Here are some of the essential components needed:
Arduino Uno (main mother board)
Breadboard (for future uses like adding relay etc.)
LCD display (for displaying the loading force)
Force Detection Sensor (taking readings)
Some buttons for controlling (e.g. resetting, starting, etc.)
Anything is missing from a electronic perspective? Do i need a loading amplifier as well?
Do you need to measure actual force, as in a specific number of Newtons was applied, or is it enough at your level to get away with some quasi-quantity such as might be returned by an FSR? (That would let you quantise the readings as sort of "pathetic", "weak", "ok", "strong" or "amazing", but would not give "X Newtons".)
Whatever you do, you will surely also have to make the part that goes in the mouth disposable or of a grade of material that can be correctly sterilised, or inside a condom kind of thing that would guarantee cleanliness.
... by which I mean not give a "certified" quantity that someone doing their PhD in dentistry might require when doing some real dental science, since the resistance can of course be related to the force, but not too precisely.
But it should be feasible to fashion a plastic (3D printed?) contraption to hold an fsr on the bottom teeth, and have the upper teeth or tooth bite down onto a small block or something, which in turn presses on the fsr like a finger would.
(edit: and put the whole gizmo in the finger cut off a glove.)
Forgive me hogging your thread, but a few things are going round in my head now.
Are you tied to this being a bite force project? The forces involved up in the 500-odd N range are not trivial, and imo the hygiene aspects are a concern.
How about doing the same thing in principle, but in a different setting? How about using an fsr between the knuckles of the extended fingers of the human hand, and see how hard the subject can press their knuckles together?
As a practical project it's just as useful: you could argue that the force so measured could give an indication of the health of the subject's hand muscles. Or just simply have a contest in class to see who gets the highest reading, and not have to worry about transmission any number of nasty oral pathogens.
