Enhancement of an electric drill body using design for additive manufacturing

Abstract

Our research work involves the use of the use of digital manufacturing tools to develop a novel design alternative to an existing application. An everyday electric drill machine has been considered and had its functionality enhanced by redesigning its body in accordance with the solutions aimed at mitigating a few shortfalls, which primarily involves its safety aspects and ease of use, while also not compromising on its extant operating capacity as well as retaining the ability to be wielded by professionals well-versed in handling the original machine. To that end, we deconstructed the CAD (Computer-Aided Design) model of a conventional drill, and attached an auxiliary (precision) grip through generative design- a superior designing experience that is powered by Alternative Intelligence-by using Autodesk Fusion 360 software. Then, it was converted to an STL file (Standard Tessellation Language), which is a competent file format for subjecting the design to the various pre-processing steps required for creating a physical model of it using additive manufacturing. Firstly, file repair and manipulation tasks were carried out through Autodesk Meshmixer and Netfabb, with the latter also doubling up as the implement used for carrying out the printability analysis, orientation optimization, construction of support structures, and finally, slicing. The finished model was of the dimensions of 165.3820 mm x 204.4808 mm x 76.2340 mm, which indicates that the design alterations did not produce a vastly different version of machine than the original one. However, the output would be considerably efficient since the overall weight is reduced, and the presence of auxiliary handle would bestow more control on the operator. This also renders the body of the electric drill a monolith, which would enable a simpler assembly operation during the manufacturing stage. The material of choice was Orgasol polyamide- a natural polyamide 12 powder possessing the physical and chemical properties suitable for this application. The specific additive manufacturing process to be used was determined to be Selective Laser Sintering, and a printer capable of performing the same was identified as Formlabs Fuse 1. The aforementioned printability analyses were carried out in accordance with these considerations and the model was found to be well in order for the same.