90% Lead Time Savings with a 3D Printed Manifold Test Fixture

nVent is a leader in the design and manufacture of electrical enclosures, fastening systems and heat trace solutions (freeze-protection cables and controls for pipes and equipment).

Challenge

Engineers were tasked with leak testing a large water distribution manifold in a new test chamber. The chamber is long and narrow and the manifold needed to be inserted through a narrow opening without damaging the manifold. This required the creation of a support, which would be strapped to the manifold to guide and center it within the chamber, see the image below:

3D Printed Support Tool

The support needed to be durable enough to accommodate up to 40 load/unload cycles per day. It also had to exhibit low sliding friction to minimize the force needed to insert and remove the manifold. One solution was to fabricate a support system from machined metal. However, this posed several drawbacks:

• Longer lead time for fabrication
• Material waste associated with machining
• Manufacturability constraints of the support’s geometry
• Excessive metal-on-metal sliding friction between the support tool and the chamber

Solution

Instead of machining a multipart metal support structure, nVent engineers 3D printed a single-piece support on a Stratasys F370™ printer using Diran™ 410MF07 material. Diran 410MF07 is a tough thermoplastic tooling material with a lubricious, slippery surface finish.

This solution offered the following benefits:

• Significantly reduced lead time
• Lower material costs
• More design freedom to produce a conformal single-piece tool
• Lower tool-to-chamber surface friction

Impact

Using FDM® additive manufacturing, nVent was able to produce an effective support tool in just under 22 hours. In contrast, nVent’s internal machine shop estimated a two to three week lead time for machined components at a cost of $1000 for material and labor. This resulted in a 56% material cost savings and a lead time reduction of approximately 90%.