By Melissa Donovan
Part 2 of 4
Appliances include refrigerators, ovens, vacuums, and air conditioning units for the home. On the commercial side of things, industrial-strength wet vacs, heating units, and even snow machines are considered.
All of these mechanisms are made up of small, complex parts—each of which must endure its own form of manufacturing before being joined together. Three-dimensional (3D) printing is one process that aids in the creation of these parts. Enacting 3D printing in house allows appliance manufacturers to speed up design processes, decrease time to market, and save money.
Remaining Hot in a Cold Business
U.K.-based Snow Business develops snow machines and relies on 3D printers from Ultimaker to prototype, functionally test, and create final parts for the machines. The snow machines are used on movie and television sets, as well as big events.
Depending on how the snow must fall, tweaks and reconfiguration of the machines is a constant process undertaken by Paul Denney, head of research, Snow Business. Responsible for designing the snow machines, his primary focus is on the machine’s nozzle, which is where it mixes air with fluid to create the desired snow effect.
With complex air and fluid flow geometry, it is impossible to cast the nozzles, so to create new ones, 3D printing is the desired method. Generally, numerous revisions are taken before reaching a final design.
Prior to working with Ultimaker, Snow Business outsourced nozzle production. “The parts were high quality, but it was a slow and expensive process,” explains Denney. Each design change required a new order and took up to seven days to arrive. “What I really needed was a technology that I could use myself, on site, that would be able to do what I need it to do.”
He turned to the Ultimaker 2+, a fused filament fabrication (FFF) printer. Used for prototyping and producing new nozzles for snow machines, it allows printing of new parts in hours at minimal cost. Denney estimates that this first printer the company bought paid for itself within just two weeks.
The production process on the Ultimaker 2+ involved printing the nozzles in ABS. The support structure on ABS left marks on the final part when printing in one piece, so Denney split up the model into two parts and glued them together after the printing was completed.
When it made sense for Snow Business, the company invested in an Ultimaker 3, also FFF, the technology is optimized to work with a wider range of filaments. This allows Denney to print the nozzles in one piece using nylon and a water-soluble PVA support. This process does not leave a mark on the finished part and saves in post-print assembly time.
Revising with 3D
Snow Business’ ability to work with 3D printing in house is ideal for its research and development processes, namely how the nozzles on its snow machines are revised during production. Using 3D printing in different phases of development allows manufacturers like Snow Business to work more efficiently.
The April issue of Industrial Print magazine includes a feature article on 3D printing for appliance manufacturers. It discusses many of the benefits, challenges that need to be overcome, and popular technologies currently used.
We also held a webinar in March on the topic. If you’d like to view the archived broadcast, 3D Printing for Prototypes and Spare Parts, click here to register.
This article is the second in a series that looks at specific instances were 3D printing was leveraged for appliance-type manufacturing.
Read part one, Powder Bed Fusion in Action.
May2021, Industrial Print Magazine