Joel Murphy and Conor Russomanno finished a highly successful Kickstarter campaign and then found themselves on the road to producing their device. The OpenBCI system is intended to make biosensing available to anyone, and the system requires that several sensors be held in place around the user’s head. The carrier to hold these sensors was an opportunity to use new technologies instead of relying on injection molding or other plastic forming options. Having used 3D printing in the prototype phases the team was comfortable with the process, and connected with Voodoo Manufacturing through a mutual friend to 3D print components for the Mark IV headset. Conor Russomanno answered some questions for us about the development of the design and manufacturing of the headsets.
One of the projects most critical decisions was to bring the spring-loaded electrode units back to injection molding. Based on part size, high volume and part cost the injection molding process made sense for the electrode components. The team originally wanted the full headset assembly to be 3D printed but ultimately decided on injection molding.
The biggest design challenge for the Mark IV headset has been making sure the design is compatible with several different printing platforms. Different printers and materials handle STL files in different ways and OpenBCI and Voodoo have been working to make documentation that lets every user take their printer and filament into account to get the best print settings and results.
The biggest manufacturing challenge was a final design of the electrodes before the injection mold build started. Conor says that 3D printing is lower risk because the design can be tweaked several times throughout the process but injection molding tooling can be made obsolete when the design shifts.
Overall the project required Voodoo to print around 25,000 unique pieces, enough to meet all of the Kickstarter demands and still have parts on hand for future orders. Parts were sent to OpenBCI for assembly and kitting, and then shipped around the world to Kickstarter backers. If the Mark V headset ever comes to pass, Russomanno hopes to develop a design that completely embeds the wire inside the frame.
We’ve covered both OpenBCI and Voodoo Manufacturing before and it’s great to see them work together on a large scale application of 3D printing. This project helps to prove that 3D printing doesn’t need to be a low volume endeavor.
(Photos courtesy of OpenBCI)