Documenting the development of a generatively designed 3D printing filament spool holder. This contributes to the ‘Industrial Digital Technologies’ Unit of the MSc Industrial Digitalisation course at MMU
Since my last post, I have been extremely busy, working to submit the project before the deadline, which is why I haven’t posted for a while. Having now submitted my work, I have written this post as an attempt at rounding off the project narrative by summarising the final design.
The penultimate prototype features a collection of small adjustments, taking a few steps closer to the final product, which will be printable in on the Markforged Metal X, before being post-processed into the functioning part.
Over the past couple of weeks, I have managed to develop the spool holder arm further, before eventually arriving at a final design (which will be featured in my next post). Here are some of the developments that have been made prior to this.
Before the Christmas break (starting 14th December) I was able to produce this new prototype, which I used to test the new design and experiment with orientation and how that might effect the strength of the arm.
Here is the first physical iteration of my generatively designed filament spool holder. The aim was to test the fit of the assembly and the way that the arm branches would print, aswell as give an initial idea of scale and strength.
For the latest step in my exploration of generatively designing a filament spool holder, I decided to see what would happen if I removed the ‘starting shape’ from the model.
Using the outcome of my latest generative design study, I decided to begin focusing on the assembly of the spool holder, such as how it will attach to the printed and how a bearing might be integrated into the design to enable the spool to rotate smoothly.
Yesterday I produced a second generatively designed spool holder design, but with an additional force imposed on the end of the cylinder to emulate it snagging on an obstacle, or being orientated in a 90 degree position, with the cylinder pointing upwards.
Here is my first attempt at using Generative Design to produce the shape of the filament spool holder.
I just wanted to post a few ideas I had for the development of the concept to ensure that the design process is fully documented.
