Solids Lab Project
Fall 2016
For my Solids Lab class, I designed and performed an experiment to analyze the differences in vibration damping properties of 3D printed beams. Using the Cura slicer software, and a Printrbot 3D printer, beams were printed in four different infill patterns: concentric, 0 degrees, hexagonal, and 45 degrees (shown from left to right). They were tested for their vibration damping properties using a variation of an ASTM standard procedure. Vibrations of the differently printed beams were measured with strain gauges. Fourier transforms were used to find the first two modes for each sample.
Hardware Used
Printrbot 3D printers were used to print the samples
Strain gauges were applied to the samples and used to track the strain in the beam during vibration
Soldering tools were used to secure wires to the strain gauges and to a data acquisition device
Experimental Procedure
Apply strain gauge to thin metal sheet
Secure strain gauge to first beam using double sided mounting tape, keeping location constant between beams
Displace beam to designated point and release
Measure data with strain gauge and DAQ data taken for 5 secs at 10,000 Hz for each beam (50,000 data points total)
Apply strain gauge to next beam with new mounting tape and take data
In total 2 sets of 3 deflections per beam (72 sets of data)
Software Used
Siemen's NX to design beams
Cura Slicer software to create Gcodes for printing the beams in different infill patterns
LabVIEW for collecting and organizing vibration data from strain gauges
Excel was used to organize data and perform preliminary calculations
Matlab was used to apply Fourier transforms to the data, find the first two modes of vibration, and calculate the half-powered bandwidth, and the loss factor of each sample
Excel was used to perform statistical analysis to isolate meaningful results.