3D APR - 3D Automatic Print Removal

Hi! We are Q&A, two twenty-two-year-old students from Barcelona studying Design Engineering and Product Design at ELISAVA. Both of us are extremely passionate about making things and the technologies used in these processes. We are especially interested in 3D Printing (both of us have our own individual desktop 3D printers).

Our goal when starting this project was to design an attachment for a 3D Printer that allows for hands-free extraction of a printed piece, both for Coronavirus and continuous production reasons in a university setting.

As such, after a thorough investigation, we have decided to design an add-on to the gripper of an IGUS DLE machine, in order to perform a fast, contactless, and automatic extraction of a 3D-printed part. It will also be a quick and easy device to install on an already manufactured 3D printer, such as a Creality Ender 3.

To build the 3D APR unit:

1. All 3D printed parts
2. NEMA 17 Stepper Motor
3. IGUS DLE Linear Actuator
4. Fan
5. Arduino Nano
6. Variety of screws

First and foremost, all the parts must be designed. Knowing that part of the goal of the project is to make it Open-Source and free for anyone to access, we decided to use Fusion360 as the selected software. Fusion360 works great for this project, as it allows not only for the actual product design aspects, but also simulations and animations. 

Additionally, part of the challenge of this project is to design all the parts knowing that the manufacturing technology that will be mostly used is 3D printing. This is known as DfAM (Design for Additive Manufacturing). It is important think of the limitations that 3D printing has and design around them. 

Taken from the gen3D website: "Design for Additive Manufacturing is the practice of designing a part or product that exploits the freedoms of additive manufacturing whilst adhering to the process limitations. The aim for all designers should be to minimise the production time, cost and risk of in-build failure, whilst maximising the functionality and quality of the components. We deliver our training and consultancy based on 4 key principles of design for additive manufacturing. An understanding of these principles will allow designers to create new designs that fully exploit the benefits of additive manufacturing and give the part the best opportunity of being a commercial success."

To learn more about this type of manufacturing mentality, here are some links:

Gen3D

Cati

Jabil

The first technical requirement is to know exactly which torques each motor will have to generate in order to move the different parts. To do so, different calculations (ranging from regular torque equations to moment of inertia) can be done. This section essentially revolves around all the calculations that will have to be done in order to ensure that the materials and components selected will hold up to the forces and strains they will be exposed to.

So as to better understand the motion that we wanted to achieve with our product, we created a quick render and animated it to see how it would work. This brief study is not the one that will determine the final operation, but for this moment it will help us to analyze the basic dynamics of the part extraction movement. The movements are:

1. Resting position
2. Start of rotation for extraction
3. Approach to the printer bed
4. Accommodation to the printer bed
5. Traction of the 3D part
6. Part removal

After making all the pieces following rigorous design processes, we believe we have arrived at a satisfactory solution: we present 3D APR, a system that allows for hands-free extraction of a 3D printed piece (both for safety and continuous production reasons).

APR works by combining 3 electronic components: an IGUS DLE Linear Actuator, a Creality Ender 3 Pro 3D Printer, and finally the 3D APR Robotic Extraction kit. In essence, our kit allows for the formation of a successful and useful link between the linear motion of the IGUS Linear Actuator and the Ender 3 Pro.

This happens by the action of the APR unit first cooling the newly 3D Printed piece until it is cool enough to extract (around 20 Cº) and then, using the movement of the IGUS the extraction of this aforementioned piece is successfully completed.

To get all the necessary parts to make the robot, these have to be 3D printed.

To print the parts, the parameters are as follows:

• Material
• PLA
• Layer height
• 0.2 mm
• Infill
• > 10%
• Shell thickness
• > 1.2 mm
• Nozzle size
• 0.4 mm

So as to make assembly easier, included in this Instructable are the assembly blueprints as well as a manual. These tools will aid in showing exactly how each part assembles together.

1. In this step, the user designs one part using some type of 3D CAD program. Only the user's ability and creativity intervene in this process.
2. This second step consists of slicing the previously 3D-designed file. Slicing essentially means taking the model, and transforming its code into something that the 3D Printer can read and follow.
3. Step 3 consists of sending the 3D design information from the printing software to the printer. Subsequently, the FDM printing starts
4. At this point in the process, the only task in action is 3D printing. Therefore step 4 is about waiting for it to finish
5. Once the printing is finished we cool the piece by using the cooling system incorporated in the mobile arm. This cooling is produced in successive cycles by the small fan incorporated in the arm. All this happens in the 5th stage
6. With the piece already cooled, it is extracted using the linear movement of the actuator and the small scarpers located under the arm
7. In step 7 the piece has been extracted without contact-generating that the 3D printer is available for a new and consecutive printing
8. Finally, the whole process ends with obtaining the 3D printed part by the user

As industrial designers, we play a fundamental role in our product's impact on the environment. For this reason, we reserve a space in this project to talk about how we tried to make APR more environmentally friendly.

To perform this environmental analysis, we used software called GRANTA EduPack 2020 (formerly known as EduPack CES Selector). This software requires the user to input the parts that would need to be studied, along with the material and the raw mass of the material used. Finally, the processes (primary and secondary) that are needed to create the piece are added as well as the type of end-of-life it will experience.

Aside from the material parameters, it must also be noted that the transport as well s the use of the product is thought of.

In general, we believe our product fulfills the environmental requirements.

One aspect that we also took into consideration was the safety of the product when it is in use. There are several safety factors that we took into consideration:

- Risk of entrapment by the IGUS DLE

- Risk of electrocution by electronic components

- Risk of hitting the IGUS DLE

RISK OF ENTRAPMENT

One of the first safety concerns is the risk of entrapment when the IGUS DLE gripper moves along the carriage. This emerges because if the gripper were to touch one of the ends of the carriage, it could trap or break a finger.

To mitigate this, we had two options:

1) Build a cover around the carriage

2) Elongate the carriage length so that the gripper won't ever touch

Out of these two options, we thought the most economic and easy to implement would be the second one. As such, our carriage length is 20 mm longer than it should be at each end; thus allowing for space for fingers or objects to not get crushed.

RISK OF ELECTROCUTION

The next safety concern that we had was that of electrocution from the electronic components. The following components would be used to operate the movement:

- Single board micro-controller

- Stepper Motor

- Stepper Motor Driver

- Wiring

All of these components would be stored on the Stepper Motor Holder. To protect them, and make sure that no one that touches them can get hurt, we add the Cover to protect everything.

RISK OF COLLISION

The final safety factor that we think is critical is the risk of operator collision with the IGUS DLE. This could lead to premature breakage or damage to the unit and harm to the operator.

The easiest way to solve this issue is to think of the placement of the unit in relation to the space where it will be set up in.

Seeing as our context is extremely well-defined (it is a university setting), we created an architectural blueprint of the space. Once we had that, we developed the solution for the position of the 3D APR.

The next step in this idea of user integration and usability was a way to better notify and link the machine, the process, and the user together. With that in mind, we thought that a good idea would be the incorporation of a companion APP.

This APP could tell the user how much time is left before the print taking place finishes and the number of prints it has already done. With this idea in mind, we created a mock-up of the APP thinking of our PRUSA user.

Branding is understood as the process of building a brand. When conceptualizing APR, we created things in order to create a product that was easy to identify both by its name and color and images, as well as obviously our product.

COLOR

The first thing we did to define our brand was to adopt a specific color that would represent us throughout this project and could also represent the product. Another goal of adopting a particular color is to associate the color with our personal brand. The color chosen was garnet red #BD2729:

Garnet Red, apart from being a color that both members of the group like, we believe gives a lot of visibility as well as importance and elegance to the project.

Obviously, other colors are used such as black and different shades of gray, but always without playing a fundamental role in the role of the association of color to the brand.

NAME

It is true that having a name that is easy to pronounce is an aspect that has a great weight in the development of branding, for this reason, we try to find a short and catchy name. It didn't cost us too much, because putting together the initial letters of the basic definition of our product we came up with APR which is the main function of our product. These acronyms refer to Automatic Print Removal. After sharing the idea of the name with the users of the interviews, the feedback was very positive, and that is why we accepted APR as the commercial name of the product.

Automatic + Print + Removal = APR

LOGO

For the logo, we mixed some ideas because we wanted to do a logo based on the name product and one drawing. 3D makes reference to that our product is related to tridimensional technology and industry. The drawing is referenced to the industry of robotics and represents the automatic property of the APR. Then the APR acronyms appear to make the name brand message more strong, and below appears the meaning of all the capital letters.

As a concluding thought, this project we believe is very useful as it demonstrates that any industrial design process requires many hours of work, both in prior study, formalisation of an idea, to realisation and final prototype work. We feel that this project has given us many new tools that we hadn't worked with (such as the canvas, cost breakdown or ind- depth calculations). All these have served us to define what we believe is a very good end product. We didn't feel like any part of this project was a burden, which doesn't normally happen.

This is the first project of this kind that we do: an almost real task. From it, we have extracted tools and experiences that we will continue looking back to and include in future projects.

As a group (and as a little reflection), we feel that this project has helped us to really push ourselves to try to understand the design process perfectly; something we had only done in a very superficial way.

We think that the biggest change from past projects is the fact that we had to prepare and present little presentations every class. This allowed us to reflect on our current progress as well as receive feedback both from the teacher and our (designer) classmates.

Therefore, we finish this project with amazing sensations: almost like a catharsis that has turned from naive and lazy students to very capable, prepared, and enthusiastic (almost) engineers.