We love our Makergear M2 3D printer!

We’ve put it through the works over the last couple of years.

As Makergear themselves say, “M2 means Quality”, and we can confirm that.

At Valarm HQ we print all kinds of critical parts and pieces for Valarm Industrial IoT applications.

Have a look through our Blog to see plenty of customer stories and examples where 3D printing + remote sensor monitoring is a no brainer that makes a lot of sense!

Most recently, we’ve added more custom enclosure housings for Industrial IoT sensors available at Shop.Valarm.net.

These custom designed 3D parts come about from lessons learned from customers, requests, listening to + understanding customer needs for remote Industrial IoT monitoring.

Here below are some fun, new, exciting things we’ve been up to with our 3D Printer:

• Custom Enclosure Housing / Harness Bracket for Alphasense OPC-N2 Air Quality Sensor – Optical Particle Counter that Measures Particulate Matter for Air Quality Monitoring with the California Government Agency AQMD
• Mounting Bracket for Long Thin Yoctopuce Sensor Modules – Easy to mount our most common size of Industrial IoT sensors in weatherproof boxes for field deployments remotely monitoring valuable stationary and/or mobile industrial assets
• GPS / GNSS Location Sensors Enclosures / Housings – Makes your GPS sensors easy to mount with as an all-in-one unit ready to deploy, antenna and all!
• GSM 3G, GPRS, and WiFi Sensor Hubs Housings / Enclosures – Now with bonus braces to safely + securely hold down those little micro USB ports, AND an antenna mount to make it easier for your organization to deploy these critical components used in pretty much all Industrial IoT remote monitoring applications.

For years we’ve been printing with PLA, a.k.a. polylactic acid or polylactide. We’ve been happy with it. Now we’re exploring other materials like PLA+ and are finding that even sweeter since it’s more rugged, pretty, and durable.

In other 3D printing related news: We’ve now got a Valarm page on Thingiverse that has designs you can download and print like MakerGear M2 Bed Cooling Fan Clips.

On the right, and all over this blog post write-up, you can see photos of our latest 3D printed parts that are mentioned above.

They’re all available right now for your organization’s remote monitoring needs. You can get them at Shop.Valarm.net.

How do these get used in real world Industrial IoT deployment applications?

More and more of our customers are using Tools.Valarm.net to remotely monitor air quality. Particularly particulate matter with optical particle counters. (Say that 1 10 times quickly!)

In these photos you’re seeing Alphasense OPC-N2 sensors mounted in Valarm boxes that are deployed in the field for monitoring PM1, PM2.5, and PM10.

These units were made with the South Coast Air Quality Management District (SC – AQMD or just AQMD), the California government agency responsible for air quality monitoring and compliance in Los Angeles, Orange County, and the majority of Southern California.

You can see in the picture that the Alphasense OPC-N2 housing is up in the top left next to the GPS / GNSS sensor housing all-in-one unit.

In the middle of each of these air quality monitoring boxes are GSM sensor hubs with the white braces to securely and safely hold down your micro USB ports.

The snazzy 3D printed sensor enclosures are also used by our customers to remotely monitor mobile assets like fleet vehicles, trucks, and trailers. These vehicles are loaded up with industrial equipment like pumps and vacuums that all need to be monitored in real-time.

You’re seeing in the photos what these industrial vehicles / beasts look like, and the Valarm monitoring systems that are tracking and measuring the industrial fleet vehicles.

Lessons learned:

• Keep your PLA, PLA+, and other 3D printing ink / plastics in big ziploc airtight bags as much as possible so they last longer.
• Along those same lines we’ve found the Eva – dry portable, renewable mini dehumidifiers are wonderful to keep in the bags with your 3D printer plastic material. These dehumidifiers are awesome since you just plug them into an outlet to recharge them. We recommend keeping a few of these around!
• When monitoring air quality, keep in mind off-gasing and what materials you want to use and what your air quality sensors are measuring, how sensitive they are, and so on and so forth.
• Surround your 3D parts with big fans once they’re finished printing for rapid cooling! Here’s a design and photo of how we do it on our Makergear M2 printer. This lets you pull your pieces off your 3D printer bed sooner and get to printin’ more things quicker!

Have a look at our Customer Stories page for more stories and examples of how we love making extensive use of 3D printed parts and pieces for remote monitoring systems.

See our Web-based Dashboards for Industrial IoT to learn more about how Valarm Tools Cloud software gives you and your organization a quick and easy way to know what’s happening in the field with your remote assets. All of your sensor telemetry measurement information is available for you from the comfort of your phone, tablet, or any other device with a web browser.

Questions?

Please don’t hesitate to Talk To Us at Info@Valarm.net if you’ve got any questions!