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Soft-Materials 4D Printer

Jason Li, Roger Xi, Harrison Yu, Xavier Zhou

Background:

Current soft robotics manipulate the fluid pressure inside its frame in order to achieve movement, but that requires pumps inside the body of the robot and offers limited flexibility. By directly 3D printing soft-material objects, the time it takes to manufacture molds through the design process will be eliminated and a 4D aspect will be introduced to the printed object. When printed with a fine-enough resolution which will allow the material to react with dynamic stimuli such as mechanical, chemical, electrical, and thermal to achieve the desired deformation through swelling, twisting, and bending. With the 4D printer, the ARMOR lab will be able to print soft material in shapes that can be controlled and actuated using a single transducer.

Objectives:

The objective of this project is to develop a soft material 4D-printer in order to eliminate the time-consuming process of creating molds and transition over to a rapid and automated fabrication process at the ARMOR Lab. This involves integrating an existing 3D printing kit, injection system for the soft materials, and software that is suitable for the control of the printer. The minimum functional requirements would be to print out a 2D object made of soft material, achieve a printing resolution of 0.6 mm, and the printer must be completely computer controlled. Bonus functionalities would be to achieve controlled deformation (4D) and install multiple nozzles to make this printer multi-material.

Final Design:

The final design is a soft-material 3D printer that is capable can be automated through the firmware of the 3D printer, a syringe pump, and Arduino Uno. Both parts of Dragon Skin, A and B, are injected into the mixing chamber through the use of a syringe pump. As both parts of the polymer are being injected in the chamber, the mixer in the chamber would continuously rotate to ensure that the resulting mixture is well mixed. The material is then pushed out through a disposable tip due to the pressure created by the syringe pump. As the Dragon Skin is injected onto the heat bed, the printer head is moving to set coordinates in order to print layers of the 3D object that it is printing. The Dragon Skin would then be cured through the heat of the heating bed and convection heat fans. An Arduino Uno is used to control the speed of a motor, the temperature of the heat fans, and the fan speed.