Capabilities of Additively Manufactured Rope Drums

Abstract

Many industry sectors benefit from the new opportunities additive manufacturing provides. Lightweight designs and integration of function are only two aspects. As there are no approaches present to insert additive manufacturing into the design of hoisting appliances though, we try to evaluate the room for improvement through experimental analysis. Additively manufactured synthetic drum-bodies fit for 8 mm wire ropes and containing different infill structures were tested for tensile strength. The cylindrical gyroid TPMS and straight spokes structures performed best with standardised tensile strengths of 17.53 and 16.40 kN/kg. Our findings indicate that additively manufactured rope drums can be a viable option for future hoisting appliances.

Structural stability of Polylactide rope drums with a hybrid Gyroid-spokes infill structure, manufactured through fused filament fabrication

“…Shell lattices are created by using two partial volumes that result from different values for t (G1). It is also possible to create volume and shell lattices with varying material thickness to adapt them to distinct load cases [2,3]. Multiple mutually enclosing and non-contacting shell-lattices can be created and manufactured in one step, for example to combine different materials into a hybrid component using multi-material printing [4].…”

“…Nowadays there is a wide range of AM processes. Processes such as selective laser sintering (SLS), laser powder bed fusion (LPBF), or stereolithography (SLA) make use of highly complex, expensive production machines and are primarily used in aerospace and medical engineering [3,5]. As of now it is financially unattractive to produce conventional machine elements with such manufacturing machines.…”

“…Rope drums generally consist of a drum body (5), on which the rope is wound, two flanges (3,8), which prevent the rope from slipping off, and a hub (1,10), which connects the drum to the drive shaft (Figure 2a). Rope drums come in single-or multi-layer spooling designs with helical or functional groove systems; the latter optimized to prolong rope service life with multi-layer spooling.…”