Training system for pneumatics

When I started as an instructor at Wienerlinien in 2021, I had to organise all the equipment needed for teaching. As availability was very limited due to the ongoing crisis, I decided not to rely on a single supplier, but to develop the equipment myself to ensure that I had enough of it available.

Why develop it myself and not just buy it?

Of course, one might think that ordering from a company is easier and faster, but with niche products such as training systems, delivery times are always longer, and during the Covid period, the supply chain was unreliable, which can be very stressful if you want to stick to the lesson plan for didactic reasons.

Another point was that the training systems are significantly oversized and very large, which means that you also need a lot of storage space.

With every investment, there is the cost factor, and the problem is that every training package always exceeds the investment limit and therefore has to be confirmed/approved by several people, which means that it takes significantly longer to place an order.

In addition, by designing the system myself, I was able to incorporate more variety in terms of components and make the system even more flexible, allowing for more combinations.

My goal

To develop a system that is as compatible as possible so that components from any manufacturer can be installed. The system must be quick and easy to produce and function reliably. It should be simple and quick to use so as not to slow down the learning process for young people. The system must be compact and easy to store and must be able to withstand all the stresses and strains of the apprentices.

I therefore decided to use profile plates with size 6 grooves as the base platform, to which the components can be attached without tools using a quick-screw system with slot nuts.

The components

The cylinder holder

When creating components using 3D printing, it is important to ensure that they are designed in such a way that they can actually be printed. Since a locking disc is integrated into the base of the cylinder holder so that the cylinder can be mounted at 15° intervals, it had to be printed lying on its side, otherwise the teeth could not be printed properly. However, this meant that support had to be used, and after a few tests, the fastest and best option was to use a printer with two hot ends, with the filament for the component (PETg) in hot end 1 and, in hot end 2, I opted for easily removable support (PolySupport), which was only printed in the separation layer to the model. This avoided unnecessary filament changes, which significantly sped up the printing time and meant that the expensive support filament was only used where it was really necessary. Using this method, it was possible to remove the support in a few seconds with pliers and the printed part did not need to be further processed, but could be installed and used immediately.

Multi-mount

Since the cylinder mount worked so well right away, I decided to develop a mount on which a wide variety of sensors and valves could be attached, ideally without any additional attachments, based on the same principle, i.e. also locking into place at 15° intervals, in order to be able to realise a wide variety of test setups very easily.

Conclusion