Conclusions and Future Work - MMW

Our project was successful in the sense that it demonstrated the expected motion smoothly and reliably. The main improvement that could be made is use of more robust adapters on the shafts for greater torque transfer. As it stands, the mechanism slips at less than ~1 Nm of torque on the wiper arm. With that improvement, an actual wiper/brush could be attached to the arm for functional wiping/cleaning.

During the project, we learned valuable lessons about:

• Reducing play/slop in linkage joints

  • Press-fit bearings requiring trial and error on the laser cutter

  • Hole tolerancing in FDM 3D prints

• Use of ball bearings to avoid sliding friction in joints

• Gear meshing quality with FDM 3D printing

• Use of herringbone gears to ease vertical alignment on shaft

• Time management

Ultimately, the monowiper (eccentric sweep) was unviable for Mercedes-Benz. With reliability problems and relatively slower clearing of the windshield, the monowiper was dropped in favor of conventional dual wipers after the 2002 model year E-Class. Perhaps with manufacturing and material advancements, the monowiper will reappear on future vehicles.