Evaluation of Additive Manufacturing Processes in Fabrication of Personalized Robot

Abstract

Customer participation in the design stage of creating personalized products is increasing. Additive manufacturing (AM) has become a popular enabler of personalization. In this study, we evaluate the fabrication of an open-source robot arm in terms of cost, build time, dimensional and locational accuracy, end-effector accuracy, and mechanical properties. The mechanical components of the table-top robot were fabricated using two different AM processes of fused deposition modeling (FDM) and material jetting (polymer jetting or PolyJet). A reduction of infill density by 50% in the FDM process slightly decreased the building time, material cost, and tensile strength, but induced a 95% reduction in yield strength. A simulation of the mechanical assembly using the CAD models for the robot and the expected tolerances of the components estimated the end-effector positioning accuracy as 0.01–0.22 mm. The 3D printed robot arm was redesigned and fabricated using the best evaluated process in this study.