Materials and Manufacturing

The project has been designed to fit into the open design movement and relies on methods of distributed design for creation. This is beneficial because it can be created any where people have access to machines rather than shipping the finished product. This cuts out the impact of shipping.

3D Printed parts

Material: PLA

Why: It is the most commonly used 3D printing plastic because it has a lower melting point than ABS so can be used on a wider array of 3D printers without the use of a heated bed.

Advantages

• Low melting point.
• Has good mechanical properties compared to polypropylene.
• High Young’s modulus so the if the pieces are twisted they have a high resistance to it.
• Biodegradable when finished with.
• Close to carbon neutral.

Disadvantages

• Slow decomposition when not in a specific environment.
• Crops are being grown specifically for PLA.
• PLA can be brittle if the part isn’t designed properly.

Possible over materials.

ABS

 

Image

Properties : https://all3dp.com/1/pla-plastic-material-polylactic-acid/

Image: https://www.3dnatives.com/en/

 

Process: FDM 3D Printing

Why: It allows for the part to be shared online and a wide variety of people can print it all over the world.

Advantages

• Complex shapes can be created that otherwise would’t be possible with other methods such as injection molding.
• You don’t have to have specialist tooling made for the creation of your part.
• Improvements in the technology have made it widely accessible.
• Low cost for parts.

Disadvantages

• Slow.
• Detail is sometimes not the best depending on the quality of the printer.
• Weak points on the layers.

Properties: https://all3dp.com/2/fused-deposition-modeling-fdm-3d-printing-simply-explained/

Image: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Fused-deposition-modelling-FDM-Printing-system_fig3_319987351

 

Material: Timber

Why: It is widely accessible and easy to work with.

Advantages:

• Cheap and widely accessible.
• Easy to cut and work with simple tools.
• Comes in standardized sizing all round the world so easy to design around.
• High strength so can bare high loads.

Disadvantages

• Can cause deforestation of not sourced properly.

Image: https://www.nwtt.co.uk/

Process: Hand sawing

Why: the wood can be cut to length on site of the creation of the machine.

Advantages

• Carries on the distributed design of my product.
• Low environmental impact.
• Easily accessible .

Disadvantages

• Cut can not be straight if not done properly.