Dr. Phil's mysterious ring...

OK, here's the complete scoop on the other 3D printing project that just came off of Colossus' hot little bed. What you see here is a 2 piece ring set holding a rubber dam. The dam is from a Zeiss scientific microscope.The idea and design behind the dam belongs to Phil Erschler,  PhD. Phil works with my wife at the Cardiovascular Research and Training Institute (CVRTI) on the campus of the University of Utah.

 Phil's mysterious ring, in position

The story:

Phil and I have been friends for years, and he's one of the few people I know who's a bigger geek than I am. Phil is the reason I have my new M2. At Christmas time we got talking about 3D printing, and he loaned me a copy of the MAKE Guide to 3D Printing. I ended up buying my own copy (who says piracy costs money?) and after careful consideration (read: about 10 minutes) I ordered Colossus.

Phil's first printer project is the ring retainer system you see here. It solves a serious problem with the Zeiss microscope in a rather elegant manner. This particular microscope is used to view tissue samples. The scope uses oil to change light refraction and improve image quality. The dam is supposed to protect the internals of the scope from the oil. Unfortunately what the folks at CVRTI observed is that the dam tends to buckle under the weight of the oil, allowing it to fail. 

Phils' ring solves that problem by stiffening the ring around its perimeter. Additionally, Phil created a central plug for the dam.

The assembly from the other side

The assembly installed on the microscope

It's a bit hard to see, but the really cool thing about Phil's solution is that he created two rings - a thicker support ring with a flanged lip, and a second thin ring that grabs the lip of the dam and sandwiches it between the two rings.  This required careful measurement of both the diameter of the ring, and the thickness of its lip. It further required a precisely calibrated 3D model and a correspondingly precise print. All told, I think we went through three iterations of prototyping print candidates to get to the final version. That's phenomenal when you think about the potential cost of doing this with conventional machining technology.

Nice work Dr. Phil, and thanks for letting me be a part of a cool solution.