Start Date
9-5-2019 1:15 PM
End Date
9-5-2019 2:45 PM
Document Type
Event
Keywords
Soft Robotics, Additive Manufacturing (AM), Internal Geometries
Description
Almost all moving creatures have soft bodies in nature. Soft bodies give them flexibility, smooth motions, silent actions, and allow them to travel through small openings. The robotics community turned their attention to the robots with soft bodies with the help of newly available manufacturing methods, actuators, sensors, and electronics. Flexible bodies have been used in many systems from medical to space applications. Soft robots have been implemented as grippers already. These grippers are incorporated into industrial robotic arms to grab, lift, or move fragile items such as live animals, produce, or sharp items. In this study, additive manufacturing technology was used for the manufacturing of molds for soft body actuators. Implementation of additive manufacturing allows for the creation of small custom plastic molds which would be very difficult to make with using conventional methods. The additive manufacturing machine used in our study is as shown in figure 5. The actuator shown in figure 11 shows the internal cavity which is designed inversely through a 3-D printed inner insert, as shown in figures 8, 9, and 10. These alterable inserts are housed as part of a complete 3-D printed mold, as shown in figure 4, that in turn gets casted with silicone to obtain these actuators. The developed parts had complex internal geometries which created the desired motions which were designed. This initial mold created an 80 mm actuator with 7, 3 mm ridges, in its internal cavity and had a minimum wall thickness of 1.75 mm, as shown figure 11. These standard ridges successfully made the actuator create a deflection of 48° from an input of 72 ml of air, as shown in figure 13. These molds can be designed in a variety of ways to achieve a desired motion, and can only be casted once, since it has to be broken into pieces for the precise removal of each actuator. This technique has been further implemented for the creation of full robotic crawlers. Beyond just making the complex parts which cannot be manufactured at affordable costs with conventional methods, price and convenience to manufacture tens of molds, until the desired characteristics are implemented, are achieved.
DOI
https://doi.org/10.5038/WPYU5865
Additively Manfacturing Molds for Soft Robots with Complex Internal Geometries
Almost all moving creatures have soft bodies in nature. Soft bodies give them flexibility, smooth motions, silent actions, and allow them to travel through small openings. The robotics community turned their attention to the robots with soft bodies with the help of newly available manufacturing methods, actuators, sensors, and electronics. Flexible bodies have been used in many systems from medical to space applications. Soft robots have been implemented as grippers already. These grippers are incorporated into industrial robotic arms to grab, lift, or move fragile items such as live animals, produce, or sharp items. In this study, additive manufacturing technology was used for the manufacturing of molds for soft body actuators. Implementation of additive manufacturing allows for the creation of small custom plastic molds which would be very difficult to make with using conventional methods. The additive manufacturing machine used in our study is as shown in figure 5. The actuator shown in figure 11 shows the internal cavity which is designed inversely through a 3-D printed inner insert, as shown in figures 8, 9, and 10. These alterable inserts are housed as part of a complete 3-D printed mold, as shown in figure 4, that in turn gets casted with silicone to obtain these actuators. The developed parts had complex internal geometries which created the desired motions which were designed. This initial mold created an 80 mm actuator with 7, 3 mm ridges, in its internal cavity and had a minimum wall thickness of 1.75 mm, as shown figure 11. These standard ridges successfully made the actuator create a deflection of 48° from an input of 72 ml of air, as shown in figure 13. These molds can be designed in a variety of ways to achieve a desired motion, and can only be casted once, since it has to be broken into pieces for the precise removal of each actuator. This technique has been further implemented for the creation of full robotic crawlers. Beyond just making the complex parts which cannot be manufactured at affordable costs with conventional methods, price and convenience to manufacture tens of molds, until the desired characteristics are implemented, are achieved.