POLYBRUSH

When a long-standing supplier discontinued the brush mat that industrial vibratory conveyors depend on to move delicate parts, an entire category of manufacturers — from cosmetics to electronics to food handling — was left without a viable replacement. PolyBrush is OPT's answer: a single-part, polymer brush mat printed continuously on OPT's roll-to-roll DLP system, designed from first principles for the physics of vibratory transport.

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Each sheet carries a 3/16" trim of angled bristles at a 20° geometry, tuned to hold fragile pieces above the conveyor surface, minimize back-pressure accumulation, and enforce one-way travel so parts never reverse. Bristles sits on top a 3D lattice substrate that can bend to machine contour and can be easily trimmed. Because the substrate prints as a single piece, there are no laminations to delaminate and no assemblies to fail. The final geometry is the survivor of roughly 400 candidate designs, narrowed through an efficient DOE program that swept resin chemistry, exposure parameters, and bristle topology against accelerated cyclic-vibration testing — converging on a configuration with the fatigue life to withstand continuous industrial duty.

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I led the work as Director of Product, taking PolyBrush from concept through full design transfer into production. It is now in service across multiple industries, manufactured in the USA, and available as a stock product.

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Patent: WO2024112896A1, Taccioli, Chu, Sun, Davenport — filed November 2023.