{"Page SDG":"SDG07 Affordable and clean energy, SDG09 Industry innovation and infrastructure, SDG02 Zero hunger","Page URL":"https://www.appropedia.org/Design_and_Implementation_of_3-D_Printed_Radiation_Shields_for_Environmental_Sensors","Page affiliations":"Category:FAST, Western, Instituto Tecnológico Metropolitano","Page description":"The measurement of outdoor environmental and climatic variables is needed for many applications such as precision agriculture, environmental pollution monitoring, and the study of ecosystems. Some sensors deployed for these purposes such as temperature, relative humidity, atmospheric pressure, and carbon dioxide sensors require protection from climate factors to avoid bias. Radiation shields hold and protect sensors to avoid this bias, but commercial systems are limited, often expensive, and difficult to implement in low-cost contexts or large deployments for collaborative sensing. To overcome these challenges, this work presents an open source, easily adapted and customized design of a radiation shield. The device can be fabricated with inexpensive off-the-shelf parts and 3-D printed components and can be adapted to protect and isolate different types of sensors. Two material approaches are tested here: polylactic acid (PLA), the most common 3-D printing filament, and acrylonitrile styrene acrylate (ASA), which is known to offer better resistance against UV radiation, greater hardness, and generally higher resistance to degradation. To validate the designs, the two prototypes were installed on a custom outdoor meteorological system and temperature and humidity measurements were made in several locations for one month and compared against a proprietary system and a system with no shield. The 3-D printed materials were also both tested multiple times for one month for UV stability of their mechanical properties, their optical transmission and deformation under outdoor high-heat conditions. The results showed that ASA is the preferred material for this design and that the open source radiation shield could match the performance of proprietary systems. The open source system can be constructed for about nine US dollars, which enables mass development of flexible weather stations for monitoring needed in smart agriculture.","Page image":"File:Rad-sheild.jpg","Page is part of":"Category:FAST Completed","Page keywords":"agrivoltaic, distributed manufacturing, farming, gardening, open hardware, photovoltaic, recycling, 3D printing, Distributed manufacturing, Polymers, Plastic, materials, Climatic variables, environmental variables, Internet of Things (IoT), low cost, radiation shield, environmental monitoring, sensing, environmental sensing, additive manufacturing, smart agriculture","Page language":"en","Page license":"CC-BY-SA-4.0","Page title":"Design and Implementation of 3-D Printed Radiation Shields for Environmental Sensors","Page views":"87","Page year":"Saturday, 01-Jan-22 00:00:00 UTC","Project authors":"User:J.M.Pearce","Project coordinates":"42.983675, -81.249605555556","Project location":"London, Ontario, Canada","Project status":"Designed, Modelled, Prototyped, Verified","Project thumb":"https://www.appropedia.org/w/images/thumb/5/5d/Rad-sheild.jpg/330px-Rad-sheild.jpg","Project type":"3D Printing","Project uses":"3D Printing","Project was made":"1","Project was replicated":"","Project year":"Saturday, 01-Jan-22 00:00:00 UTC","Modification date":"Wednesday, 16-Sep-26 14:01:32 UTC"}