Filtering the waste from the water
The water containing waste material gets into the vessel by way of the vacuum pick-ups, then underneath the control room and finally into the section at the back of the vessel. In that section the water enters a net which collects the big and small particles and the purified water exits the vessel through the water exhaust manifold (refer to Ava’s drawing). To design the manifold with its artistic curves, as previously mentioned, I had to master the “sculpting” function in Fusion 360. After watching a couple of YouTube videos it was fun to pull and stretch the various faces of a starting cube to form the desired shape (see the drawing), a bit like playing with Play-Doh. For the net used to store the waste, I used material from a discarded window screen (thanks to the local squirrels) that I sewed into the required shape. I also made the access port with its decorative rivets on the 3D printer. I dipped the as-printed PLA piece on the flat printer bed in very hot water for 20 seconds and bent it to the right curved shape.
