R&D Laboratory Tasks
Printers Assembly, CAD Modeling, Repairing.
Besides my internship project for my university, I was responsible of several tasks in the R&D Laboratory, The most important one was printers assembly.
The assembly of the HPP 155 FDM printer is an essential process of the work done at the R&D Laboratory, because there is where the printers are assembled and tested so they can be ready for the customers.
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This requires a very careful procedure due to all the vital parts of the printer such as the nozzle, the heat bed, the extruder, the electronic components, and the cooling mechanism. Six (6) people were trained to assemble the printer, and I was one of the three (3) people chosen to assemble the printers, after demonstrating the skills and abilities needed, and along my internship I assembled approximately one printer per week.
Apart from assembling the printers, I managed other responsibilites, such as:
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-I designed parts to be printed on PEEK, so they could be exhibited in the website, the company office and conferences. For the design of this and all other tasks, I used SolidWorks.
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-I did several 2D drawings of the parts for the next generation FDM printer of the company, using PTC Creo.
-I designed a prototype for the Spool Holder of the printer HPP 155, which was significantly quickly due to the possibility to make the prototype directly in the laboratory. To reduce the printing time and material needed, I designed a spool holder with a inside-threaded printed cylinder to hold the spool by the inside, and printed rings which will support a sheet of other material, in order to hold the spool by the outside and avoid the filament of being exposed. In comparison with the previous spool holder, this prototype could be done 30% faster.
-I modeled broken parts at the office and printed replacement ones. In the pictures you can see a part from a dishwasher, and a part of a clothes hanger. Plus, in my extra time, I printed parts to improve the PLA&ABS printers of the company, which were a Felix 3.0 and two Mendel Max. And sometimes I printed things out of my curiosity, like an elliptic gear.
-Another task was to test a Winding Machine, to make the filament extrusion process easier. It required fixing some electronic components and printing some small parts, but it was successful.
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