Robotic Forming: Rapidly Generating 3D Forms and Structures through Incremental Forming

Abstract

The past years have seen significant developments in the area of robotic design interfaces. Building upon visual programming environments, these interfaces now allow the creative industry to de- fine even complex fabrication processes in an easy, accessible way, while providing instant, production-immanent feedback. However, while these software tools greatly speed up the programming of robot- ic arms, many processes are still inherently slow: Subtractive process- es need to remove a large amount of material with comparably small tools, while additive processes are limited by the speed of the extruder and the properties of the extruded material. In this research we present a new method for incrementally shaping transparent polymer materi- als with a robotic arm, without requiring heat or dies for deep- drawing, thus allowing us to rapidly fabricate individual panels within a minimum of time.