The team is composed of two Mechanical Engineering Students and four Industrial & Manufacturing Engineering Students.
Project Manager
Adviser / Sponsor
Mechanical Functional Manager
On January 27th, 2022, team 410 was given the following scope:
Design a hot-inserts that can be inlaid within the 3D printed mold geometry to provide structural rigidity.
To collect a better understanding of the project, the team created a survey and met with sponsor, Dr. Tarik Dickens, and staff advisor, Sean Psulkowski. With the information gathered, a Fishbone Diagram was created to define the targets that the project would need to acheive. From that point, the team has had multiple brainstorming sessions where over 10 concepts have been generated. In the last meeting with our sponsor, one concept was selected for further improvement.
The final design is composed of two ABS plates, a layer of PolyFlex and a neyodynium magnet attachet to a biscuit joint.
The design ises a biscuit to fix the two plates at a 10 degrees offset from eachother and, is able to support 10 lbf with a factor of safety of 2. The dimensions of the Polyflex layer are 115mmx50mmx3mm and its purpose it to constrain the to abs plates at a nominal distance to allow the insertion and removal of the biscuit joint. The design was validated using a force guage, which showed a slight descrease in the payload the device is able to support. This may be due to the fact the ABS plates were created using addative manufacturing, therefore having failure lines along the printing surface.
The industrial engineers on the team applied their knowledge of plastic material properties when researching what materials to use for the baseplate. The project is about the supports, but they need good surrounding material chosen to hold these supports. Since the team is making it at the college of engineering, it needs to be a material we can use to 3D print. ABS was chosen as the filament material to print the to use for the baseplate because of it’s chemical and abrasion resistance, tensile strength, surface hardness, and rigidity. ABS can be produced to be fire-retardant for necessary applications where it needs to be exposed to extremely high temperatures. The other material used for the web attachment is a TPU based filament, which has a way higher melting point and will act as a barrier between any applications of heat and the ABS baseplates. The TPU based material has melting points of 255C, or 491F, which is durable for the additive manufacturing applications that this design can be used for.
The reason behind using 3D printing process as a priority was because makes less material wastage and let us be more flexible with the design. The team used Creality 3D Ender 3 printer to print the design using ABS and PolyFlex .The plates and biscuit were printed using ABS filaments, since it remains a very popular material for 3D printing professionals due to its resistance to impact and high temperature (between -20°C and 80°C). It is opaque, offers smooth and shiny surfaces and can be welded by chemical processes using acetone. Also, PolyFlex was used and is from a family of high-quality flexible materials. It provides the perfect solution for applications where high flexibility and durability are required. PolyFlex™ TPU95 is a thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU) based filament specifically engineered to work on most desktop 3D printers. It has a shore hardness of 95A and can stretch more than 3 times its original length.
Having completed all 5 phases (Define, Measure, Analyse, Improve, Control), the team has concluded the project. The proposed design can be further optimized with the addition of electromagnets and electrical components. The neodymium magnets used can only be attached and detached at close proximity and therefore manually; on the other hand, electromagnets can be switched on and off with the push of button. This technology is useful and versatile for environments where there is difficulty of performing manual operations, such as underwater or even space environments. Another improvement that can be made is to have the components 3D printed with better performing materials such as the Polyplex filament, which can withstand a lot of impact and has some elastic properties. This improvement is needed mainly due to the fact that the design showed some small resistance when engaging and disengaging at the fixed position; more advanced filaments, or even composites can be used to solve the previous issue, so the surfaces of the plates can slide and attach smoothly. The proposed design must be updated with the suggested implementations to increase its performance in the test field, reaching better results overall.
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