A New Old Project

The Genii Whirlwind Airwasher

While blogging in the dark of smoke and power outage of the Camp Fire. I struck up conversation through an Internet Link with my youngest sister about my need for one of my fume scrubbers. The last of the hand made ones died last year. My grandson and I had purchased a small 3D printer last year to begin creating a new model. Something some of us need from time to time to breath and sleep during periods of poor air quality. My sister , a recently retired educator was interested in helping her brother in creating a business to manufacture and market this consumer market Airwasher that I had developed over 25 years ago and had failed to successfully bring to market.

People that used the hand made units really loved them, including myself but the unknown changes in motor quality by the motor manufacture right after I started creating them doomed that effort and often caused premature failure of the devices. An economic down turn at a critical time caused my prospective investors to backout and the effort collapsed.  The Proposed consumer model was abandoned. Oh well, I moved on.

With the Internet and 3D printers we might be able get this going for something less then the $500,000 that I was looking at the last time and if my sister and her adult son take an interest they might be able to create a real business for themselves and I can continue my other projects. Finance and business management are among her talents and her son is an independent craftsman/tradesman type. This might even work out and I won’t have to do everything myself like the last time.     Ok ! lets go for it!

Once again I am digging into Acad and creating files to be printed for test models that can evolve into Beta units that will result in injection molded retail consumer units.

Quality, Swamp cooler water pumps are providing the motors for the new effort and the possibility of designing around the right kind of motors for the job. I need to set up a printer cabinet in my cozy computer Lab.  😉 Lol while doing test work in the kitchen. Getting the water pickup, air flow and effective scrub action while making efficient use of the motor without overloading it will be the next challenge.  Every part must be laid out so it can be created by the printer, no small thing. This requires 3 dimensional visualization and planning. Luckily with Acad, the computer can Show me the proposed part  before I print my mistakes.  Next learn about how to operate a 3D printer to print this 4 part power head that is the motor enclosure, water pickup and scrub blower.

Wow! that is close to actual size on my monitor, 5 inch blower ring and 6 inch motor mount disk. While I’m resting I will need to figure out the scrubbing scroll and air guides …pg

December 9  I just got the Acad file done on the above, looks good enough to print. All of the internal parts are laid out. Now to set up the printer and figure out how it works. Take these Drawings apart and rasterize the individual parts for the printer to render into plastic. The AirWasher box is 7 inches square, as large as the little 3D printer can make, I would prefer 10 inches for better scrub action. I may attempt a glueup for later testing or we may set up a larger printer later.

Then I can test to see if 25 year old memories are still valid. Only took 2 weeks to get fairly comfortable in Acad again. It certainly renders nice visuals, Almost as good as a real picture….pg

January 2 2019 update……you can see the improvement in my CAD abilities as well as the design improvements in the proposed Airwasher as well as my grasp of 3D printer use.

T6 Genii Whirlwind Airwasher

The white container is an off the shelf, semi-clear poly, 1 gallon food container. The motor is from a quality swamp cooler water pump. The rest of the scrubber parts are all printed on a small 200mm x 200mm deck printer. The real device is not quite as colorful as we only have one color of filament, but HR remarked about how color coding being a real help in CAD work. While peering into a complex 3D CAD file can be very confusing, the contrasting colors are a big help, as is the ability to move from wireform drawings to realistic renderings as needed, this is a wonderful improvement in doing CAD work.

As you can see the power head and scrub sections lift out of the bucket for ease in daily cleaning. No screens, no filters, no added chemicals, just water and 60 watts of power to really clean the air in a large, 300 square foot room. Dust, pollen, chemical vapors, nearly anything that can harm you can be removed with this Industrial fume scrubber. Wow! I have impressed myself this time.

Monoprice 3D Printer IIIPv2

About the smallest, most inexpensive, usable printer on the market, $250 on Amazon

This little robot is quite an impressive toy as well.  My small closet sized computer lab is now a manufacturing Empire!   😉  …pg

January 8 2019  I now have a test unit running for 2 days. So nice to have an Airwasher running in my space again. Dust levels inside already are decreasing and smell is freshened. Needs improvements, but at least it works. My Lady, my sister, my daughter, all want a copy of their own. Still having problems mastering the printer to get dependable results. Seems to require some spell or secret knowledge. Maybe a bigger better printer would solve my problems?  Maybe, someday,……..pg