"BioSpalt" bionically inspired cleaning of technical gaps

Keeping technical gaps clean is an inadequately solved but common problem and of special imprtance, e.g. for keeping clean the joints of robot arms or joints in prosthetics, sealing the tubes of zoom lenses or door gaps against dust, ... Known sealing lips and brushes have a dirt-spreading, abrasive effect. The presented brush sealing is bionically inspired. Thanks to a coordinated surface structuring on the one hand and a special brush geometry on the other, particles are effectively transported out of the gap. The cleaning effect exceeds those of conventional gap brushes. With technical sealings it's not possible to completely prevent dust intruding into technical gaps. This is especially true for gaps between two parts of a device, oscillation relatively to each other. Moreover, once intruded into the gap, it is very unlikely that dirt will be removed again. This is because particle transport with conventional sealings has no preferred direction. Instead, dirt is only moved back and forth with the periodic movement of the device.

Inspired by the hump beatle, the invention presents an optimized structuring of one of the two surfaces moving against each other and an advantageous brush geometry for the opposite surface. Flat inclined planes of the structured surface enable particles to be transported with little effort into one direction. The steep edge on the other side allows the particles to be wiped off and prevents them from being transported back. This reults in a "net" particle movement along a preferred direction and out of the gap between the device's periodically moving parts.

Gold award winner at the international trade fair "Ideas-New Product" iENA 2024 and 2023!

• Highly effective particle transport and cleaning effect
• Scalable and adoptable to particle sizes from nm to cm
• Simple technical implementation
• Low cost solution compared to sealing air or fluid

TRL 6