3D Printer Smart Filter

The goal of the project is to develop and improve the design of the 3D printer smart filter. indeed, the 3D printed smart filter will be a handsfree, low maintenance, and affordable, auxetic filter which can be scaled to fit various pipes and used in various configurations to provide the required filtering

=Problem Definition=

The 3D Printed smart filter will need to be able to filter particulates and be remotely cleaned. The 3D printed smart filter should explore the concept of a negative Poisons ratio. In other words the filter should expand and release particles trapped when a stress is applied to the filter. Exploring selective stress to pore size ratios to make a selective particle size filtered.

Specifications
=Design Considerations=

1. Snowflake

• The snowflake has some great potential because of the large open area of the filter face. • This comes at the cost of the strength of the connecting members of the filter face. • The biggest problem with this design is that, even though Solid Works simulations states that this will be able to withstand 50 lbf  and have the pores open up to 110% of the closed size, the 3D printers will not print this design. • The printed prototype of this design was a tangled mess of 3D printed filament that did NOT resemble the design drawn in CAD • This design fails because of the inability to print this design with the thickness of the connecting members at this point. • This design could potentially work if the connecting members of the filter face were thicker. • Plans to make a MK2 of this filter are in the works. These plans will attempt to alleviate the printability issues of the current design.

2. Snowflake with rounded relief holes

• The rounded relief holes in this design attempt to make this filter face printable and had mild success in this regard • This design fails at this particle filtering size in real world practicality because of the lack of reliability and resolution in 3D printers in 2019. • This design was printed, but all the layers were not printed in a resolution that allowed a viable filter mesh. • In a very short test, the printed prototype broke within 2 pulls at human strength. (less than 50 lbf in an axial direction).

3. Bowtie

• The bowtie design didn’t make it past the FEA stage of development because of the large stress concentrations that are through the entire model. • In order to fix the large stress problem, we would have filleted all reentrant corners, but this creates a new problem of not having enough displacement to open the pores correctly. • This design had another problem that the main body of the filter face will have members connecting the bowties that are twice the thickness of the members that would be attaching the filter face to the axial force of the linear actuators. • This design would be really easy to 3D print and to scale to a new particle size, so we will attempt to make this design work when we are printing designs out of TPU.

=Project Learning=

=Final Design=

=Validation=

=Team Members=

=Additional Documentation=

Project Schedule



Meeting Minutes

Presentations



Client Interview