Cadalyst - January 2008 - (Page 14)

techtrends Chasing the Dolphins Building a biomimetic underwater vehicle using CAD/CAM. By Kenneth Wong T ed Ciamillo is a few months shy of his 40th birthday, a justifiable time for a midlife crisis. Like many others confronting this milestone, he’s going on a prerequisite soul-searching adventure, but he’s not doing any of the clichéd activities, such as climbing Mt. Everest or hitchhiking across Asia. Instead, he’s going to design and build an underwater vehicle and pedal it across the Atlantic. Capturing the Fluke Ciamillo dropped out of engineering school in his third year, but that didn’t stop him from becoming an engineer in his own right. In his 6,000-square-foot cypressframed workshop in Nicholson, Georgia, he and his staff develop and market a series of bicycle components using various CNC (computer-numeric controlled) machines. The 0G (Zero Gravity) TI, Ciamillo’s invention and the company’s signature product, is described as “a precisioncrafted, superlight–road braking system” that is produced from “superior materials, optimized geometry, and a patented cam lever system.” As a machinist, Ciamillo has developed an interest in biomimetics, which is the study of mechanical devices that mimic the biological construction of animals. To design the propulsor of the Subhuman, his 15-foot-long humanpowered submarine, he’s looking to the shapes and movements of aquatic creatures for inspiration. To begin with, he has derived the geometry from a CAT scan of a dolphin’s flukes. “I tabulated the flukes’ [x,y,z coordinates] and started using the Extruded Lofting feature in Solid Edge to string together a series of cross-sections to replicate the foil geometry of the dolphin,” Ciamillo said (figure 1). Siemens PLM Software (formerly UGS), the makers of Solid Edge, listed STL import as one of the new features Figure 1. Based on a CAT scan of a spinner dolphin’s fluke, Ted Ciamillo constructed the Subhuman underwater vehicle in Solid Edge. available in v20, which began shipping in August 2007. If Ciamillo were starting his design today, he could have directly imported the CAT scan data as a binary STL file into Solid Edge. Regardless, he said he still would prefer to create the solid model from the ground up using the numerical data of the scan. “When the [STL] file came in, I would still have to take measurements from it then reconstruct the shape, so [the import] would be just another additional step,” he explained. In addition, “[working directly with the numerical data] allowed me to filter the errors in the data and average the values.” Trailing the Moon The dolphin also guided Ted’s earlier invention, mono-fin scuba equipment called the Lunocet. Ciamillo came up with the name by joining the Latin moon-oriented prefix luno with the whale-related suffix cet (from cetacea). “Most foils in marine industry — for instance, sailboat rudders — have symmetrical shape[s] in cross-section, but no camber [concavity on either side],” Ciamillo pointed out. “The dolphin’s flapping foil is symmetrical at rest, but [the animal] uses its fluke to induce camber during the swim, which adds efficiency.” Sharing his invention on the community forum at Deeper Blue in January 2005 (http://forums.deeperblue.net), Ciamillo wrote, “[The Lunocet] weighs in at 2.75 lbs (1,247.4 grams). I was able to produce 150 lbs of static thrust. Top speeds have not been accurately measured yet. The production model will have a thin translucent urethane skin and have a better chord-wise flexibility gradient.” Dr. Frank Fish (yes, that’s his real name), the research scientist who first suggested the morphology of the dolphin for Ciamillo’s projects, remarked, “The reason we’re In this article Mastercam www.mastercam.com Siemens PLM Software (Solid Edge, UGS Velocity Series) www.siemens.com/solidedge The Subhuman Project www.subhumanproject.com Zero Gravity www.zerogravitybike.com 14 January 2008 | cadalyst | www.cadalyst.com http://forums.deeperblue.net http://www.mastercam.com http://www.siemens.com/solidedge http://www.subhumanproject.com http://www.zerogravitybike.com http://www.cadalyst.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Cadalyst - January 2008

Cadalyst - January 2008 Contents Editor's Window Cad Central Chasing the Dolphins CAD that Won’t Break the Bank AliasStudio 2008 — Design and Visualization Software VectorWorks 2008 — CAD/BIM Authoring Software Dell Precision M4300 — Mobile Workstation What’s in Store for 2008? Low- or No-Cost CAD Goliath Reinvented Doin’ the DEED Cad Cartoon Issue Indexes The Return of Hot Tip Harry

Cadalyst - January 2008

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