Wire-feed flexure research

What I did

• Worked on unreliable wire output in a metal 3D printer, under the guidance of a master's student.
• Organized data into charts and other media to demonstrate the results in a final presentation for degree credit.

How I worked

• Modeled the full flexure assembly and the wire interaction with FEA in ANSYS Workbench and Mechanical.
• Produced animations and a summary presentation to communicate design decisions and compare iterations.

Progress

• Built a rough CAD test assembly to evaluate 2D beam element behavior before scaling up to the full model.
• Reduced simulation runtime from 3 hours to 4 seconds by integrating 2D beam surfaces into the full assembly while preserving the key outputs.

Takeaways

• Learned ANSYS on a real-world application and became proficient with it.
• Receiving credit in the master's student's final report deliverable.

To add: what the wire problem actually was, what the first simulations got wrong, and how you found the 2D beam shortcut.