A water filter removes or reduces contaminants from water through the use of a mechanical barrier, chemical or biological process.
You may have seen on a television show how English adventurer Bear Grylls once used charcoal as a filter to remove harmful contaminants from water in the wild. I would say that the use of charcoal is a combination of mechanical barriers and biological processes.
Build a new water filter
In today's society, the water filter is a common product and the market is quite saturated. It's probably very difficult to design a new water filter that stands out from so many other water filters.
For example, Elon Musk and Tesla. When we think about Tesla today, it is an absolute success story. Elon Musk became the richest man in the world, thanks in part to Tesla's success. Before the birth of Tesla, there were already many fuel-powered cars on the market. Most consumers were satisfied with what they got. While cars are mature products, electric cars are not. If you look at the facts and watch Elon Musk's interview on “60 Minutes” where he almost burst into tears, you know how difficult it is to develop a new product. As smart and optimistic as Elon is, there were times when Tesla was on the brink of failure. Yet despite all odds, Tesla and Elon Musk succeeded, even when Elon's idols didn't believe in him.
What I'm trying to say is that developing a new product is never easy. It’s always full of obstacles and requires a lot of hard work – just like the manufacturing industry. In addition to good ideas, designs and processes, we also need inspiring personalities like Elon Musk who motivate us internally.
As prototype makers, we’ve seen “smart technology” become all the rage in recent years. If you want to develop a new water filter, try to develop a smart water filter.
We could create a conceptual prototype to prove your idea regardless of using plastic or metal components. We even offer practical suggestions before starting pilot production and mass production.
Case study – Building a water filter prototype
A customer approached us to make a water filter that can hold approximately 10 gallons of water. Most components were expected to be made of clear polycarbonate when manufactured, but the prototype material could be any clear plastic. The customer hopes to produce the prototype as cheaply as possible. Furthermore, the main objective of making the prototype is to test whether the water filter works or not. Aesthetics are not that important.
About materials
Materials available for transparent prototypes are colorless polycarbonate, colorless acrylic for CNC machining, colorless polyurethane for vacuum casting, and colorless photosensitive resin for stereolithography (3D printing).
Consideration
Colorless PC/PMMA is typically used when there are high aesthetic requirements or a part needs to be visually tested, such as: B. a car lens. PMMA parts in particular can have a surface roughness of Ra 0.025-0.05 μm. However, sometimes a part needs to be split and glued together if it is too large for CNC machines. Although transparent PC/PMMA parts bonded with UV glue have little impact on the aesthetics of the part, for parts that need to retain water, the bonded area may not be strong enough. In order for the item to retain water well, it is better to make it monolithic.
For water filter prototypes: vacuum casting or 3D printing
The colorless polyurethane used for vacuum casting is also an ideal method for creating transparent parts. Vacuum cast transparent parts can be made almost visually transparent. We also widely use this material and process to manufacture automotive lenses. Vacuum casting is also called silicone molding. A silicone mold can be reused around 15 times in a vacuum casting process, meaning there is no cost for the mold for the second to fifteenth piece. Therefore, vacuum casting is often the most economical method when the quantity is more than 2 and less than 100 pieces. Since the customer only needs 1 prototype and wants it to be as cheap as possible, vacuum casting is not the best method here.
The other way to make a transparent prototype is stereolithography (3D printing). The only material available is photosensitive resin. In general, 3D printing can be used to produce quite large parts. In this case, the components do not need to be disassembled into several parts and glued together during 3D printing. Components can be printed monolithically, unlike the CNC machining method, which requires most components to be disassembled and glued together, and there are some areas that CNC end mills cannot reach. Transparent parts made by 3D printing are much less transparent than polyurethane parts and PC/PMMA parts. Sometimes clear bubbles may appear on the clear parts during the process. After calculations, we found that the 3D printing method is the cheapest. The client finally decided on this procedure.
After the water filter components were 3D printed, the customer assembled them and they worked as expected. The customer is considering proceeding with mass production of the water filter.
