3D printed actuators Archives - Perfect 3D Printing Filament

Although 3D printing of actuators is a relatively new field of research, interest in the area has grown due to the potential applications of highly customizable, programmable, small scale actuators in micro/mesoscale robotics., including 3D printed hair-like actuators. A common area of research has been into soft actuators for possible industrial applications, where various 3D printing technologies – FDM, DLP, SLS, inkjet, Direct Ink Writing (DIW) and customized SLA platforms, have been used to build multi-material actuators with improved performance, functionality, design flexibility, and manufacturing efficiency.

Soft Actuator industrial gripper applications. Image Courtesy of Virtual and Physical Prototyping 21 Journal

Traditional manufacturing methods for miniature actuators in soft robotics, molding and soft lithography, were limited—and 3D printing has brought several advantages over them. With 3D printing, the inherent design freedom means actuators can be customized at the very small scale easily and can even be designed to accurately mimic bio-inspired architectures. Applications have now advanced to include 4D printing, as researchers from Deakin University and Trent University have established in this study.

Published in the Visual and Physical Prototyping journal in July, the study applies 4D printing/3D printing technologies in fabricating Soft bending-type Pneumatic Actuators (SPA), that respond to changes in air pressure. These 4D/3D printed actuators are made using elastomers and are able to deliver a range of motions, such as bending, twisting, rotating, rolling, jumping, in response to simple changes in air pressure.

Image Courtesy of Virtual and Physical Prototyping 21 Journal

These actuators are superior to traditional robots in industrial applications such as food packaging, fruit harvesting, space exploration or non-invasive surgery, and provide improved properties in flexibility, lightweight, amplitude and repeatability of motion, ease and cost-effectiveness in fabrication among others. Such 4D/3D printed fabrication methods could also potentially allow for the integrated manufacturing of embedded electronics including sensors (resistive, capacitive, chemical or biological) in elastomeric materials to provide control mechanisms for such miniaturized SPAs.

Image Courtesy of Virtual and Physical Prototyping 21 Journal

4D/3D printing enables the development of such high-resolution microscale functionalities for microscale applications although it comes with its own set of challenges, as the study notes,

“Miniaturising and scaling down the 3D/4D printed SPAs are highly desirable, particularly by adding the micrometer-size functionalities for practical applications in the manipulation of microscale delicate objects, e.g. cells. Yet, such feature should be scalable in all the key components of the SPAs, including the integrated sensors, flexible electronics, and controllers. However, miniaturising the SPAs is constrained by the resolution of 3D printers and challenges in 3D printing such as avoidance of microscale voids and channels.”

DIW, an extrusion-based 3D printing technology using photocurable resins, was used to fabricate a programmable bio-inspired SPA with tunable mechanical properties. The fabrication approach using DIW had advantages over FDM, SLA, SLS, inkjet, and DLP – producing few voids, required variable stiffness and fatigue properties, higher strength and elongation at break. New approaches to 4D printing SPA’s have developed self-exciting vibration capabilities, or incorporated bellow-type and embedded fibre into the 3D printed elastomer matrix. In terms of sustainability, 3D printed SPA’s could be designed using recyclable materials to have lower environmental impact, with optimized parameters to reduce its carbon footprint and waste.

Such research has opened up a wide range of possibilities in the design, automated fabrication, modeling and control of 4D printed SPAs, and with further improvements in materials, will guide the way to the next generation in soft robotic actuators that will enable better performance, customization, new applications, cost-efficiency, and sustainability while also making human-robot interactions safer than ever before.

The post Could 4D Printing Enable the Next Generation of Soft Pneumatic Actuators? appeared first on 3DPrint.com | The Voice of 3D Printing / Additive Manufacturing.

I always enjoy a good 3D printed DIY project, whether it’s truly helpful or just for fun. These projects are even cooler when you add Legos into the mix, like Reddit user DIY_Maxwell did. He posted about his work using 3D printing, Arduino, Raspberry Pi, and Lego bricks to make an open source, motorized microscope. But, the microscope itself is not fully 3D printed – instead, the body was built with Lego bricks and some 3D printed components. What makes this project more awesome is the stop motion-style video he made showing the various parts of the project and how they all fit together to make a working microscope.

BUILD YOUR OWN MOTORIZED MICROSCOPE using 3D-printing, Lego bricks, Arduino and Raspberry Pi… all design files, source codes and detailed instructions are provided open-source. from r/3Dprinting

“I wanted to have a modular microscope, something I can easily modify for transmitted-light, reflected-light, cross-section, etc. My early prototypes did not have Legos, as I started making my own interlocking pieces, I realized that I was in fact printing lego-like designs, I thought buying legos would be less of an effort,” he wrote on Reddit when asked why he didn’t 3D print all the parts. “Then I found out about these “sliding” lego pieces, which are very precise for linear actuators. The other advantage is that, if I want to change the height of the camera let’s say, I simply add more bricks, it’s convenient.”

DIY_maxwell used FreeCAD to design the 3D printed microscope parts, which were fabricated on an Ender 3 system. All of the source codes and design files have been provided open source on GitHub, along with detailed step-by-step instructions on how to make your own.

Before you jump right in, do you know what exactly a motorized microscope does when compared to a regular microscope? DIY_maxwell explained that, at least for him, it needed to be able to tilt in order to take photos, from an angle, of “highly reflective surfaces (semiconductor chips),” and that it should quickly adjust the focus and magnification, and position of the sample.

“The microscope has a simple operation principle based on changing the magnification and the focus by adjusting the relative distances between a camera, a single objective lens and a sample. Briefly, two linear stages with stepper motors are used to adjust these distances for a continuous and wide magnification range,” the GitHub instructions state. “Four additional stepper motors tilt the camera module and change the X-Y position and rotation of the sample. A uniform light source illuminates the sample either from an angle (reflected light) or from the bottom of the sample (transmitted light).”

The main components of this modular, motorized microscope include a Raspberry Pi system, an 8 MegaPixel camera, six stepper motors, a keyboard or joystick for variable speed control, uniform illumination, and obviously plenty of Lego bricks. Depending on the specific features and electronics vendors used, the whole thing costs between $200-$400, and once you have all the parts in front of you, should only take a couple of hours to assemble.

The main body was built with individually-purchased Lego bricks, and DIY_maxwell designed custom actuators and 3D printed them, rather than using available motors and gears from LEGO Technic.

“This approach not only lowered the cost of the microscope but also gave me some flexibility in the design and implementation of precise linear and rotary actuators. In principle, the whole structure could be 3D-printed without using any LEGO parts but that would be less modular and more time consuming,” he writes in GitHub.

In addition, 3D printing offers you the flexibility of quickly changing the design for maximum optimization if and when it’s needed.

“If the parts do not match well, some minor modification in the original design file (e.g. enlarging the holes matching to LEGO studs) or polishing/drilling may be required,” he explained.

The contents of the motorized microscope are as follows:

Linear Actuators
Camera Module
Rotary Stage
Illumination
Tilt Mechanism
Electronics
Final Assembly
Software

You can find detailed instructions, images, slicer settings, tips, and more on GitHub, and a longer version of the assembly video can be viewed here.

Several other Reddit users who routinely use microscopes related how impressed they were about the project; a geologist mentioned that “starting price can be anywhere between $500 to $1000 for something with that kind of quality” when DIY_maxwell said that his microscope could “easily resolve 10um features.” A pathologist expressed excitement about “a modular system to motorize common non motorized microscopes (Leica, Olympus, etc.).” While the compliment was appreciated by the maker, it was noted that “this microscope is not meant to replace a lab microscope used for medical assessment. No dark-field, no fluorescence, no aperture control, it suffers from chromatic aberration and other optical effects at high magnification, etc.”

“I hope this prototype persuades other DIY-enthusiasts to develop new designs of microscopes.”

If you’re interested in using 3D printing to make your own microscope, you can check out all of the relevant information on GitHub to build this one, or check out the OpenFlexture Microscope project on Wikifactory. This was created as “part of the Waterscope initiative, which by allowing for fast and affordable on-site bacterial testing of the water quality in developing regions of the world, is helping to cope with the diseases caused by bad quality water drinking.”

OpenFlexure Microscope

The OpenFlexure can be built in the classroom and used as an education tool for both students and teachers. Because the 3D printed microscope stage uses plastic flexures, the motion is free from friction and vibration, and the four-bar linkages in the stage can be 3D printed in a single job with no support material.

You can find other open source 3D printable microscopes on Thingiverse as well; happy making!

Discuss this and other 3D printing topics at 3DPrintBoard.com or share your thoughts below.

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