From Prototype to Production: Product Development of a Modular Automated Milk Sampling Device for Conventional Dairy Farms

Abstract

Milk sampling and testing is critical in the dairy industry as it provides farmers information to make accurate decisions about nutrition or medication on their cattle. Currently, the milk sampling process is both costly and labor intensive. Therefore, an automated milk sampler is developed to reduce the time and labor needed to collect milk samples. This thesis discusses in detail about the product development process of the automated milk sampler, which shows the path of the automated sampler from design schematic to working alpha prototype. The automated sampler consists of an infrared sensor that monitors the flow in the milking pipeline, a custom sampling vial that stores the milk sample, and two custom pinch valves which control the flow of air and milk accordingly. The path to low volume production of the automated sampler is laid out after the alpha prototype is demonstrated to work in lab conditions.