Week 12

Product Development 2 - 3D printing 🖶

This week we learned more about 3D printing. We were introduced to digital fabrication. 

What is digital fabrication?🤔

Digital fabrication is a design and manufacturing workflow where digital data directly drives manufacturing equipment to form various part geometries. 

"What can I do with what I have learned?"

Why digital fabrication? 😮

Since society is increasingly digitalized 📱 and globalized 🌐, digital fabrication is important. Manufacturers are shifting towards advanced manufacturing technologies and a component worker will be one that can learn and adapt to new knowledge. Digital fabrication is fast, becoming an important enabling technology in many chemical engineering fields. 

What is digital fabrication good for? 👍

Good for prototyping 📐

Allows:

- Physical evaluation of the design ✊

- Perform functional testing before committing to a full production run 🧪

- Print numerous design iterations to identify and remove errors before production 🔎

Good for End-Use Parts as well 📍

Allows:

- Extend lifespan of older equipment by printing obsolete parts 👵

- Reverse-engineer spare parts ←

- Customisable high value/low volume End-Use production, (Tools and jigs are not required) 🛃

Examples of 3D printing 

In the University of Connecticut (UConn), chemical engineering students have developed a prototype for an artificial kidney that makes use of 3D-printed parts and hollow fiber membrane technology.

A chemical engineering student from Texas Tech University discovered that only the carbon Nanotubes infused in polymer filaments heat up quickly when exposed to microwave and hence can fuse together the layers in a 3D print making it stronger. 💪

Reactor and fluid flow study using digital fabrication.

Activity time ! 📝

Each group was tasked to develop the teaching materials for a designated topic and peer-teach this topic to the class.

Our group's topic was slicer setting for past printing. We had to introduce and discuss briefly how slicer settings such as layer height, print speed, part orientation, infill density, supports and etc. can affect the time required for 3D printing.

Our presentation included:

What is the setting? 🤔

How does it affect the speed of printing? 😮

What can we do to shorten the process of printing to reach 'fast printing'? 👌

Our presentation slides:

The other groups also presented their topics which we listened to intently as we had a quiz on the topics presented by each group. Other groups presentation:

Quiz time 📑

The quiz was hard at first but since our 2nd attempt was done with each other, it was easy 👍 and fun 🎉.

Reflection 📜

Trisyia 🐌

This week was a continuation of 3D printing. It was an interesting lesson as we got to know more about the 3D printing software. I didn't know there were so many different settings in the software. I got to know that 3D printing is actually more commonly used in the industry than I thought. The presentation we did was also quite fun as I've never had a spontaneous or shortly prepared presentation before, so I got to practice my presentation skills. I also got to know the certain settings for fast printing and what affects its speed. The quiz was also manageable and I liked the fact that we could work together as it actually bonded the class because of everyone sharing each other's answers. Overall the lesson was pretty light and I enjoyed it a lot.

Jun Ying 🚲

This week was more fun than usual, as we learnt about how 3D printing is used in the industry. We also got to make an impromptu presentation about the different components of 3D printing, based on what we had learnt earlier in the class and through doing our own research. Researching about my part, which was how printing speed affects printing time, was quite easy, as the concept was very self-explanatory. Nevertheless, I felt satisfied when I finished researching and presenting, as I felt that I did a good job teaching about printing speed to the class. I also got to learn about other interesting things from other groups, such as the different types of 3D printing materials. Lastly, the quiz was quite easy as I had learnt a lot from everyone's presentations. All in all this was another fruitful lesson and I look forward to the next.

John 👽

For today's lesson, we learnt more about 3D printing. We already had a taste of how 3D printing is through the use of Fusion 360 however, I did not expect 3D printing to be much more complicated. There were so many different settings to account for that even I did not know was needed. All this time I had thought that it was just making the 3D product in Fusion 360 and then immediately printing it but I was wrong. The things I had learnt was very interesting as I learnt what materials to use to how the hollowness of the 3D printed product affects the weight and strength of it. Other than the research done, we also had to present to the class our findings and it was a really short presentation but nonetheless, I have learnt quite a lot from my peers. Finally, was the quiz. Honestly, the quiz was not bad as it was very direct and my fellow classmates really did a good job explaining the settings therefore I was able to get full marks on the second attempt. Overall, 3D printing really needs a lot of factors to consider and if I were to try to 3D print myself, I know I would seek help from people with knowledge on it.

Jessica 🐰

In today lesson, we learned about 3D printing and we knew that there are many different industries that using 3D printing. There are also many type of 3D printing materials and different slicer setting such as nozzle temperature, layer height, speed and etc. Each slicer setting can affect the time needed to print the object and the quality of the object that has been reproduced in 3D. Our group was ask to present about how slicer setting can affect the time required for 3D printing. Each of us select one type of slicer setting and do the research. We will then ask to present after finishing our research. I was a little nervous during the presentation but the overall performance was good. One last thing to do is we had a quiz to do. The quiz was not that hard as I was able to get all the answer correctly.

Kevan 🐺

I learned how to 3d print, i learned how to be a 3d print, i learned how to become a 3d print, and most of all i learnt why 3d print is important in real world situations. We learned many ways on how to increase the 3d printing speed, quality through the setting on the 3d printer. And how different 3d printers work. We had a quiz to test our knowledge, and i got 2 questions wrong =I. Anyways, we got the result of our keychain which we made it in our previous lesson, which was produced from a 3d printer, and this shows anything can be made with a 3d printer and you can use it to help others.