Weeks 5-8 Focusing on Design

All of my time during weeks 5-8 has been dedicating to designing components for our track as well as minimizing production time. A modular design is proving to be both an asset as well as an inconvenience. Being able to design a track that is modular will ease assembly and disassembly down the road. The time that we can save doing this is extremely important when our project is showcased at Maker Faire. Unfortunately, being modular also requires a few extra components compared to a non-modular design. One of the biggest hurdles to face is time. Each hangar bracket for this project requires about 105 grams of plastic. Initially the print time estimate was 4.5 to 5 hours. Along with working on designing the track I have been focusing on how to reduce this time substantially. To do this I began investigating into utilizing a large nozzle diameter on the 3D printer. Increase the amount of material that flows through the nozzle would reduce the amount of time of the prints. The key is to find a balance between a larger nozzle diameter as well as the dimensional accuracy of the 3D printed parts. I tested a 1.00 mm nozzle and found that this nozzle was difficult to work with, produced sub-par parts and did not give us the dimensional accuracy we would require. After a few failed test prints I tested a 0.8 mm nozzle. With a few tweaks to the slicer program settings I was able to get a successful print and a hangar bracket that meets our minimum specifications.