A Study on the Product Design and Prototype Manufacturing of a Plastic V-Belt Pulley

플라스틱 V-벨트 풀리 설계 및 시작품 제작에 관한 연구

In this study, product design and prototype manufacturing of a plastic water-pump pulley has been tried. The designed model is supposed to be made of 33 % glass reinforced resin of which the tensile strength is 180 MPa, and has 24 ribs on each side to increase its structural strength. Structural analysis under a static load of 300 kgf acting on both edges of the belt has been carried out using a commercial finite element code, MARC. The analysis result showed the maximum effective stress near a rib of designed model would be at most 35 MPa (less than 20% of the tensile strength), therefore, the plastic product would be sufficiently safe under that loading condition. On the basis of the structural analysis, a prototype of the designed model has been manufactured by using the fused deposition modelling (FDM) method which is one of the rapid prototyping (RP) methods, using ABS resin and support materials. The CAD data exported to the RP system in STL format was prepared by a commercial solid modeling software, SolidWorks. It has been proved that the plastic pulley can successfully replace the existing flow-formed steel product.