Blog Entry 4

July 29, 2022

Blog Entry 4

Heyy guys!! I've got interesting things to tell you!! For this week's blog post I'll be sharing with you my journey through ICPD Practical 5. Firstly what is practical 5? In this practical we need to design a device that enables a raw quail egg to survive (no crack) a fall from a height of 2 metres 😳😳.

Part 1: Advantages of Additive Manufacturing

In this activity we need to identify three 3D objects/models that cannot be easily manufactured by subtractive manufacturing. For those who are unsure of what these terms me let me break it down for u

Figure 1

Subtractive Manufacturing is the traditional method people in the past use to make scriptures, models and design. Its shaped by eliminating materials (better for manufacturing large objects)

Additive Manufacturing is the addition of material on top of a base. The object is created layer by layer by the machine with high accuracy and is better for producing miniature objects such as keychains and threading.

This are the three objects/models we chose:

Figure 2. Latice Structure

Figure 3. Human Heart Model

Figure 4. Chainmail Armour

All of the above examples have complex designs and inner cravings which made production using subtractive method extremely challenging to the manufacturer. Therefore, human innovation lead to the creation of additive manufacturing (3D printing) which creates objects one layer at a time with high precision. This saved time and benefitted man kind tremendously in terms of research as well as production. Scientists are still testing the limits of 3D printing and who knows we might be able to print a working human ear to help people that ear and hearing disorders.

^^^^3D Printed Ear Implant!!------ https://www.webmd.com/a-to-z-guides/news/20220602/woman-new-ear-3d-printed-cells

Part 2: Quail Egg Drop Challenge

There are a few requirements for this practical:

1. Almost the entire device must be 3D printed and does not require any non-3D printed parts.

2. Require minimal pro-processing & make efficient use of material

3. We are allowed/encouraged to study successful designs from similar competitions/challenges and make adaptations/modifications to them as long as it is not a complete rip-off and the STL files were created from f3d files by my team in Fusion 360.

4. Lecturers may request to see the print for quality. Therefore, we need to keep our print after challenge.

Part 2.1: Inspiration, concept design & assembly notes

These are some designs that inspired our final design:

Inspiration 1

^^^https://youtu.be/uC36aKR2qZ8^^^

The first design that caught our eye was this "bomb" shaped design we saw on YouTube. The title said that "3D printed egg drop 9.5m success"!! The success of the design is due to the wide rounded bottom, circular ring structure around the egg and fins at the back of it so that it falls in desired position (head first). We figured that since this design could survive a 9.5m drop it could surely survive a 2m drop. WE wanted to find out how a missile or a bomb always land with their tip first so making the tip impact absorbent will be crucial to our product. The original idea was also to make this product big so that we are able to cover a big area increasing air drag, but it would mean excessive use of material as well as an incredible amount of 3D printing time hence we did not make our product very big. With that we used the GRADCAD-community which is an online platform where people share their 3D printed product designs to merge it with our main ideas of what we anted our design to look like which will be shown in inspiration 2.

Inspiration 2

This jellyfish looking design is successful and unique. So we looked into the components of this mysterious design. We found out that the wings and springs as well with a tight egg capsule played a part and we decided to integrate this design to the rocket. The original concept was to make springs to absorb shock, the curved wings trap air underneath to slow the falling and the egg capsule has a higher toughness then the egg shell hence it is able to protect it from any damage. With more discussion with other groups as well as my teammate, we settled on the first design shown below.

Draft 1

The first design was modelled from inspiration 1. WE utilised the fin design and incorporated it into our design. At the end of this design we simulated the drop test in our head and realised that is only a 2m drop test. This means that the fins will have a very low contribution on our design. The fins were implemented so that the base will hit the ground first, but with a heavy bottom we are sure that will already work. With that we ditched the fins and swapped out with another part featured in our draft 2.

Draft 2

The second design is modelled from the second inspiration where there were blades/wings in place to trap air under it and slow down the fall.

As we were persistent on making a bomb design the shape to change would not be an option hence we opted for the change in cross-sectional area. Therefore, we made a wing span around twice the size of the body itself.