Japanese Bridge Project

As the team and tech lead for a group of three, we were tasked to design and manufacture a bridge using FDM 3D printing. The bridge had to look aesthetically pleasing but also be able to withstand 20 pounds of downward force at the center, and had to span a minimum of 40 cm, which forbade teams from 3D printing the entire bridge in one go. The bridges were judged on its weight, weight bearing capabilities, and aesthetics. I was inspired by traditional Japanese bridges that I often came across when visiting temples in Japan so we decided to follow a similar design. I used Solidworks to CAD most of the parts and blender to CAD the lamp posts. I also performed FEA analysis with nTopology to simulate the stress distribution of our 3D model. Using these results, I optimized our initial design to be as light as possible while still being able to bear the required weight. 

All teams were required to use PLA to print all of the components, and I post-processed and spray painted the prints. Although there were a lot of hardships in successfully printing all 15 parts of our design, we were able to build the bridge ultimately after going though a lot of iterative design changes and 3D printing configurations. Fortunately, the bridge was able to pass the weight bearing test as designed. Our team placed 2nd for the aesthetics through voting and 5th for the weight of the bridge in a total of 10 teams.