3D FOREGOER Helped Indian Railways for Resolving High Tension power lines problem with the help of 3d printing Technology
Product: Monkey/ Animal /Bird Repeller.
A) Monkey/Animal/Bird Repeller
Monkey/Animal/Bird Repeller product developed by 3D Foregoer Team using 3D Printing Technology is the best and optimal solutions for South Central Indian Railways for avoiding down time due to short circuit accidents on 25kV high tension (HT) power lines when monkeys /Animal/Bird climbs on HT power lines
B) 3D Printing Technology.
3D printing or additive manufacturing is a process of making 3 dimensional solid objects from digital CAD file (.stl).It is additive manufacturing process which builds solid objects by layer by layer depositions of material and it is implemented by modern industry as it has many advantage over conventional approach for building complex shapes using less material than traditional manufacturing process.
C) High Tension Power Lines Problem in Railways.
Monkey/Animal/Birds will often seek the highest point to nest or just to perch. Such animal climb high tension power lines poles and tries to approach high tension live wire, this leads to major problems. Animals while approaching live wire from poles or insulator side power transmission line does not complete the circuit and many times it leads to short circuit. Due to this, breakage of wires and disruption of train services occurs. India Railways face such problems regularly .For resolving this Indian railways along with their registered suppliers/ vendors approached 3D FOREGOER, Hyderabad for the design solutions.
D) 3D Foregoer Team’s Research and Design Solutions
As the vendors of South Central Indian Railway (SCIR) explained their problem of high tension railway lines to 3D Foregoer team, then the team actually visited the common India railways track site and concluded after thorough analysis of the problem and brainstorming for the ideas to create a barrier for avoiding monkey/animal/ sitting on live wire.
3D FOREGOER Team developed many concept based on the Design for Six Sigma approach for New Product Development process including Quality Functional Deployment (QFD) and Failure mode and effects analysis (FMEA) and they finalized the disc shape design model for repeller which should be fit and Forget type of assembly , because as per research on site only circular part with two part assembly which will get fixed to the insulator portion of high tension wire since the live wire could not be dissembled or cut for facilitating the installation of the Repeller.So disc having two parts having snap fitting which interlocks the two disc parts .In addition to this, sharp tongs/prickers provided on disc to restrict monkey /animal from crossing over to live wire from pole side.
E) CAD Design & CFD Analysis for Monkey/Bird/Animal Repeller.
After finalising the concept model, team developed CAD model for the concept with CAD (Computer Aided Design) software and CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) simulations analysis was done to ascertain if the monkey/bird/animal Repeller is able to withstand wind pressure created by train when it moves with a speed of 100-120 km per hour and passes the electricity pole.
F) Material Used.
The repeller product is to be installed in open area so it has to withstand sunlight, rain and wind pressure. For that purpose, ABS material is selected for the development of prototype .For real time applications which is out door application exposed to sunlight and Rain and cold material with UV stabilisations was required so material PC-ABS material compositions was recommended which combines the properties like strength, toughness and electrical insulations and UV light stabilisations?
G) 3D Printing of monkey/Bird/Animal Repeller.
After design and analysis, next step is printing. 3D Foregoer Team used FDM (Fused Deposition Modelling) Technology for best result. The product is developed, some post printing process are done and then sent it to testing which gave best results to the problem. So this product monkey/Bird/ Animal Repeller is best solution for high tension wire problem in South Central Indian Railway.
H) Conclusion.
In conventional method, Monkey/Bird/Animal Repellor product would have taken upward of 30-60 days or more just for making the prototype of plastic parts but with 3D printing it took short time of 3 or 4 days. This is one of the Great advantages since product development delay create uncertainty, and other aspect in conventional method is the cost of product will increase in view of investment in mould, labor, assembly, production also it handles design iterations smoothly with optimised cost etc. In short, 3D printing provides wide variety of cost effective product development solutions which reduces error and also reduce time in Design to market, reducing cost of life cycle of the product.
