Using 3D printer students design attachment for a quieter leaf blower

Nate Greene, an engineer at Towson’s Stanley Black & Decker, calls the innovation “extraordinarily atypical.”

A gaggle of scholars from Johns Hopkins College signed onto a category venture and had been tasked with constructing a brand new product for the multinational instrument firm. And so they really did it.

Utilizing a campus 3D printer, a group of 4 seniors at Hopkins designed a brand new attachment for leaf blowers, able to quieting a number of the harshest decibels of a blower’s sound.

“The college’s focus is so theoretical,” stated Greene, who suggested the scholars on their design. “So to discover a group that understands the appropriate methods to use that idea proper off the bat … The group has been not solely good on the content material they’re engaged on however good at simply working by altering tasks.”

The attachment is a cylindrical nozzle, which permits a lot of the air from the blower to go by however directs a few of it into skinny, helical channels, dampening the high-pitched whine typical of the neighborhood nuisance.

The scholars selected to focus on essentially the most annoying a part of the blower’s sound, stated Madison Morrison, one of many mechanical engineering majors who helped create the design.

“We knew that if we might enhance the noise high quality—despite the fact that, clearly, with a blower system, it is laborious to fully remove noise—it might be not less than a extra nice expertise in your neighbors making an attempt to sleep in or your self even because the person,” she stated.

On the cusp of their commencement, the scholars filed for a patent, and the invention is on its solution to manufacturing at Stanley, anticipated to hit retailer cabinets in about 2026, Greene stated.

“The design is tremendous distinctive. We have not seen actually something like this within the trade,” Greene stated. “As a result of it’s so novel, the group’s been in a position to file a patent. The design is patent-pending, which is a large step.”

The scholars developed their prototype for a selected DeWalt electrical blower, Greene stated. Now, the corporate is evaluating whether or not their attachment might work for different blowers, too.

When the scholars started engaged on the venture final August, their mission was merely to quiet the blower. They weren’t certain how they’d accomplish it.

On the outset, they’d completely different choices, together with taking an “lively” or “passive” method, stated Michael Chacon, one of many college students on the venture. The previous can be akin to noise-canceling headphones, which generate competing sound waves to cancel out noise. The latter can be just like a gun silencer, which does not cancel out the sound however dampens it. They selected the latter, hoping it will be simpler to generate, prototype and set up on the blower.

As soon as they determined they’d create an attachment, manufactured from a kind of plastic, they started testing completely different designs within the 3D printer. Their first iteration was shorter in size and had completely different formed channels however already confirmed promise, Morrison stated.

“We had been like, ‘Wow, this design has a lot potential,'” Morrison stated. “Going from that drafting board to: That is in my hand and form of works? Actually, that’s such an ideal feeling.”

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