MQP - Silicone 3D Printing

Advisor: Prof. Joe Stabile

Location: Worcester, MA

Timeline:

May 2023 - May 2024

Teammates:

Luke Regan, Jacob Talbot, Owen Weber

About The MQP

The Major Qualifying Project, MQP, is the final undergraduate capstone project at WPI culminating all the knowledge learned during undergrad. Generally, teams of 1-6 students from one or multiple departments advised by a faculty member work together and tackle a real-world project over the course of a full academic year. Each team is given $250 for each student, so our team of 4 had $1000 to make this project. Throughout my MQP project experience, I had the opportunity to work on an excellent team with 3 other mechanical engineer friends and peers building a Liquid Silicone Rubber, LSR, FDM 3D Printer, that we later submitted for a provisional patent through WPI. Fortunately, after competing against 64 other Mechanical MQP groups we were recognized by the Mechanical and Materials Engineering, MME, Department and local industry experts to have earned the 1st place, Provost Award for the best MME MQP in 2024.

Provisional patent (63/635,868)

Poster

The Project

Scope: Develop a working silicone printer that addresses the scarcity of consumer level LSR 3D Printers.

Challenges:

Holding teammates/friends accountable, and to an appropriate work standard
Integrating seperate subsystems seamlessly together for the final working product
Writing an all inclusive and useful abstract and paper to pass on to any future contributers to the 3D Silicone Printer - MQP

Items Learned:

Klipper firmware environment and Onshape collaborative online CAD software
Fluidics management and motion system design and execution
Trusting teamates who have a stronger skillset in different parts of the project

Broader Impacts:

Multi Material printing with thermoset elastomers
Enhanced thermal and waterproofing of 3D prints
Future medical applications such as flexible hand models with bone like filament and highly customizable silicone implants

Silicone Pumps

Scope: Select and engineer an optimal high viscous pump for A & B Part LSR.

Challenges:

Syringe pumps where the standard pumps for lab created LSR printers but where limited in function, while there are several other pumps we could choose from
Peristaltic pump tolerances are extremly fine and had to be optimized to the flow and pressure capabilities of our printer

Items Learned:

It is nice to have extra parts at your disposal as you may need to use them
Using Jacob's Bambu 3D printer and material knowledge was integral in the success of this project

Silicone Reservoirs

Scope: Design and engineer an optimal reservoir to house the A & B part LSR while still allowing easy refilling of tanks.

Challenges:

Selecting how much volume of silicone would be best needed for any and all applications
Print in place design of hinges require specific tolerancing and support to be as strong as possible

Items Learned:

The right tubing material is integral for thermal, pressure, and fatigue resistance
A bottom funnel fluid drain is important to work both with gravity and reducing material waste

IDEX Hotend Toolhead

Scope: Design a temperature resistant and thin hot end toolhead to maximize print volume.

Challenges:

Standard hotends are thick and bulky and when paired with another big toolhead reduces print bed surface area coverage
Material clamp tolerancing and warping when it comes to 3D printing

Items Learned:

High creep resistant materials are benificial when working with heating sources
Full team input is important

Scient Logo

Scope: Design and fabricate a working logo to increase team morale and increase printer asthetic.

Challenges:

Finding a short and sweet team name from Silicone Enthusiasts: Sient
Finding locations to display the logo without going overboard

Items Learned:

Team bonding, fun, and cohesion is important for success
Laser cutters are a useful tool in manufacturing parts and logos

Programming

Scope: Learn from Owen how to use Klipper and complete the functioning on board programming and part .gcode slicing functionality.

Challenges:

A week before Owen went abroad we fried the printers motherboard and scrambled to get everything working
Software integration of multiple toolheads

Items Learned:

Mainsail/ Klipper board control for BIGTREETECH Manta M8P
Ultimaker Cura custom printer profile creation

Printing

Scope: Refine the printer to have good looking prints while being easy for a user to run the printer.

Challenges:

Refining printer paremeters for each specific material
Keeping track of and noting all useful information from visual tests

Items Learned:

Failure and iteration is an important part of the engineering process
Success takes time and doesnt always look perfect at first

Presenting

Scope: Display and present a digestable academic years worth of work to judges and the public.

Challenges:

Changing our presentation on the fly for those who knew more or little about 3D printers
Integrating a hybrid presentation to an inperson event for our final team member abroad during presentations

Items Learned:

Having a stretch goal and purpose of the use of a product is integral to its funding and success
Keeping your audience engaged and understanding with props, visuals, and demonstrations is extremely useful. I learned from Luke who does this extemely well

Showcasing

Scope: Showcase and document our project for future students and people.

Challenges:

Concision of wording and choosing the useful vs not useful
Determining how we can capitalize from our success as a future team

Items Learned:

Our whole team became somewhat experts in the silicone 3D printing space
Hardwork Pays off

Additional Information

I wanted to thank and congratulate my whole team for our success throughout this project. I learned more about public speaking, 3D printing, material selection, best CAD practices, and electrical engineering from them and without them our overall success would not be possible. I am a better engineer from this process and wanted to thank my advisor Joe Stabile and WPI for the opportunity to work on such an impactful project.

Submitted Paper

3D Silicone Printing_ Final Paper (1).pdf

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