Design and Fabrication of Customized Hair Clipper Comb

Abstract

Prototyping is an essential part of the product design and development process that assists in the implementation of a conceptualized design. 3D-printing has been widely utilized as a prototype method since the 2000s when it became prominent as an additive manufacturing process. The inherent rapid prototyping ability offered by 3D-printing coupled with the need to be able to develop customized daily use applications remains to be the highlight of the present study. This study consists of the development of a hair clipper comb model, impact test analysis, and fabrication of the product using commercially available materials. 3D model of comb for Philips hair clipper was developed using ONSHPAE software, followed by a design study with various materials to understand the impact resistance of the product. The design study was performed via finite element (FE) explicit dynamic mode, where two hair clipper comb designs, one with a solid body and the other with a shell were subjected to drop test simulation in two orientations: leg and head drop. Two readily available 3D-printable plastic materials, Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene (ABS) and Polylactic acid (PLA) were selected for the FE simulation while the comb was subjected to free fall from a height of 5 ft (1.67 m). Simulations reveal that the maximum von Mises stress for solid PLA model in head and leg drop configurations are 56.4 MPa and 60.4 MPa respectively, while for the hollow design (shell model), the values are seen to be 40.3 MPa, 30.9 MPa respectively. Similarly, for solid ABS the stress values are found to be 42.8 MPa (head drop configuration) and 34.3 MPa (leg drop configuration) whereas in the hollow model (shell) the values recorded are 30.6 MPa and 26.9 MPa, respectively. To validate the results, the 4 models were fabricated using 3D Printing and were manually dropped from the same height. In line with the simulated results, models prepared from PLA material failed upon the impact while ABS samples having a comparatively better impact resistance sustained the impact without failure. Moreover, fracture surface morphology of the failed PLA component and the surface of ABS in a printed condition were analyzed using Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM). The microscopic examination was performed to analyze the quality of 3D-printed clipper comb and correlate the 9 defects with failure mechanism. The shell model made up of ABS material turns out to be the most suitable choice out of the various designs considered.