FDM Printing: A Fabrication Method for Fluidic Soft Circuits?

Abstract

Existing fluidic soft logic gates for controlling soft robots typically depend on labor-intensive manual fabrication or costly printing methods. In our research, we utilize Fused Deposition Modeling to create fully 3D-printed fluidic logic gates, fabricating a valve from thermoplastic polyurethane. We investigate the 3D printing of tubing and introduce a novel extrusion nozzle for tubing production. Our approach significantly reduces the production time for soft fluidic valves from 27 hours using replica molding to 3 hours with FDM printing. We apply our 3D-printed valve to develop optimized XOR gates and D-latch circuits, presenting a rapid and cost-effective fabrication method for fluidic logic gates that aims to make fluidic circuitry more accessible to the soft robotics community.