Ergo-Tact Brush CAD For Enterprise Term Project

For my senior CAD for enterprise class at Purdue University, I participated in a term project where the task was to innovate the electric toothbrush. The project entailed product research, reverse engineering, design/innovation, finite element analysis, and fabrication. The role I played in the project was the head designer of the housing, 3D printing/ prototype fabrication, and head of conducting the FEA on the team`s product.

Below you will find the final report the team compiled to present our work for the fall semester. Following the term report, I go into more detail on my work with the FEA / Housing.

Ergo-Tact Brush Term Report.pdf

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As I stated before I was responsible for designing the Team`s housing and conducting a finite element analysis of the overall design. As for software I used SolidWorks for CAD and transferred a simplified assembly model shown below into Ansys Mechanical to conduct a FEA. When it came to designing the housing the team and I split up different parts from the gifted electric toothbrush we deemed to be reused in our design/ new internal components and molded them to scale. Once the internal assembly was finished I designed a housing based on the ergonomic research conducted by the team around it to ensure all internal geometries were accounted for. Moreover, I singled out the external components of the assembly and created a basic Cube on the end of the brush head to simulate a tooth and exported said components into a single-step file to be inserted into an Ansys Study. I set boundary conditions that set the tooth into a fixed position and distributed forces on the housing with values previously assessed by the team. The mesh was set was fine and in addition to the mentioned boundary conditions, a 10-minute simulation was conducted that resulted in a 0.81 N reaction force on the tooth, and a high-stress point revealed at the neck of the housing. Above is a Gif and Image I created showing off an extremely exaggerated total deformation animation that has a colored scale based on distance from the original position explaining why the bottom of the brush is red.

Overall, this project was very rewarding and got me even more familiar with SolidWorks and FEA. I look forward to more projects and continuing to learn.