Abstract
The present research aims to exploit commercially available materials and machines to fabricate multilayer, topologically designed transducers, which can be embedded into mechanical devices, such as soft or rigid grippers. Preliminary tests on the possibility of fabricating 3D-printed transducers using a commercial conductive elastomeric filament, carbon black-filled thermoplastic polyurethane, are presented. The commercial carbon-filled thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU), analyzed in the present paper, has proven to be a candidate material for the production of 3D printed displacement sensors. Some limitations in fabricating the transducers from a 2.85 mm filament were found, and comparisons with 1.75 mm filaments should be conducted. Moreover, further research on the low repeatability at low displacements and the higher performance of the hollow structure, in terms of repeatability, must be carried out. To propose an approach that can very easily be reproduced, only commercial filaments are used.
Highlights
The additive manufacturing methods applied in the sensor industry seek to overcome some of these problems, guaranteeing lower production times and costs, with the possibility of embedding the transducers into structures directly during the manufacturing
Most 3D-printed sensors are built by exploiting the mechanical properties of the most common filaments used in extrusion-based additive manufacturing
This paper reports an experimental study that aims to fabricate simple and low-cost 3D-printed strain sensors in the form of 3D-printed hollow parts, as potential compressive strain or tactile sensors, exploiting low-cost commercial equipment and materials
Summary
Fabricated sensors have some limitations, such as high production times, difficulty in producing elements with relatively small dimensions (micrometric features), difficulty in assembling micro components using imprecise and non-lasting fixing and/or gluing methods, high costs due to the miniaturization of the component, and poor large-scale reproducibility. The high standardization of manufacturing processes allows highly affordable sensors to be obtained Such commercial sensors have substantially individual components, which need to be arranged mechanically in a structure or body under observation and be connected electrically to a measurement device. The possibility of manufacturing printed sensors allows the production of each individual sensor to be embedded together with a complex custom measurement structure, in which the electric wires are embedded additively through the same manufacturing procedure. The affordability of printed sensors must be investigated, before future implementation, by bearing in mind that the sole degree of freedom is the shape conferred on the sensor itself In this context, the present research aims to evaluate the commercially available materials and machines for fabricating multilayer, topologically optimized transducers, which can be embedded into mechanical devices, such as soft grippers. The exploitation of commercially available materials and machines could dramatically affect the diffusion of 3D additive manufacturing of mechatronic micro components
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