Nov 6, 2015 | By Benedict
Researchers at Purdue University, Indiana have developed a new system for 3D printing functioning products with electronic and motorised components enclosed within. The system, dubbed “RevoMaker”, allows users to print on a rotational axis rather than a standard printing bed, and can be used to produce customised devices such as a computer mouse moulded to a user’s hand shape.
Most 3D printers print objects layer by layer, from the bottom up. This allows for far more complex internal structures of objects to be printed than is possible with other production techniques such as injection moulding. However, typical 3D printing does have its own problems. To print overhanging or protruding features of an object—the outstretched arms of a figure, for example—requires the use of removable supporting scaffolds. This is because the 3D printer cannot print material suspended in space: the 3D printed material must fall upon another layer of printed material. The use of supporting scaffolds wastes time and material, problems which the RevoMaker system attempts to combat.
The RevoMaker not only reduces the need for supporting structures, but also uses a new technique for multi directional printing. The system eliminates the need for assembly of certain products. Whilst many electronic devices have individual pieces of their structure fixed together around their electronic components, the RevoMaker allows for a 3D printed structure to be build around a product’s electronics in one single print. "Using our methods we will soon be able to make things that actually walk out of the printer by themselves," enthused Karthik Ramani, Purdue University's Donald W. Feddersen Professor of Mechanical Engineering and a professor of electrical and computer engineering. The embedding procedure involves securing the electronic or motorised components inside of a small box, itself 3D printed, with the 3D printed exterior printed onto the faces of the cuboid as though they were the printing bed of the 3D printer. The cuboid can be rotated at any time, allowing the 3D printer to start printing on another of its faces, or upon existing printed layers.
"With a traditional 3D printer you print on a planar print bed and the platform is fixed," explained Raymond Cipra, a professor of mechanical engineering. "Our strategy is to replace the print bed with a laser-cut cuboid which can be rotated about an axis to provide orthogonal printing surfaces on each side of the volume. This cuboidal volume is also the space into which the electronics, motors, batteries are embedded before the printing process begins. Perhaps you could have multiple cuboids that you snap together in a customisable fashion.”
The RevoMaker is not a 3D printer itself, but a mechanical system which can be used with ordinary consumer-level machines, replacing their existing print bed with a multi-axis apparatus. "Our focus lies in enhancing an existing 3D printer at minimal cost and complexity so that one does not have to use a more complex and expensive multi-axis machine," said student Wei Gao, one of the project’s contributors. "By just rotating the cuboid and using the 3D printer's own X, Y, and Z-step control, we add much greater functionality and capability to the process. The process also enables side-surface functionalities, such as push-buttons, that also interact with housed modules in a compact volume."
Each cuboid is tailor-made for a particular 3D print, which allows for waste minimisation and efficient 3D printing. Production time and material used were reduced by up to 37% on some 3D prints. ”The cuboid base is generated inside any geometric model using our cuboidization algorithm,” explained Yunbo Zhang, a postdoctoral research associate. “As the whole model is partitioned by the base, the algorithm computes the cuboid with as large a volume as possible cuboid to save printing material and with optimised orientation to reduce the necessary supporting material.”
The plastic boxes could be shipped as flat templates and then unfolded and assembled in series to create a variety of products.
"The idea is that this is more personalized than traditional printing jobs, not mass manufactured," Ramani said. "I can envision products that are produced from modules and can be made for a small number of people. You go to the neighborhood business store, where they print customized products on demand."
The RevoMaker team currently has no plans to commercialise the system. Instead, they hope to see the project amass a community of contributors and developers. ”RevoMaker cleverly integrates several engineering innovations that advance the already incredible capabilities of additive manufacturing, making it more efficient and significantly easier to use by users of all ages," said Ed Morris, Director of America Makes, the National Additive Manufacturing Innovation Institute. "Potential applications of these technological advancements are equally incredible, from the fun of making custom toys, to use as a dynamic teaching tool, to empowering those with physical disabilities to create their own functional devices that enhance their quality of life.”
The researchers’ full findings are expounded in “RevoMaker: Enabling Multi-directional and Functionally-embedded 3D Printing using a Rotational Cuboidal Platform”, which will be presented at the Association for Computing Machinery's Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST), November 8-11 in Charlotte, North Carolina. The paper was authored by Gao, Zhang, Ramani, Cipra, and graduate student Diogo C. Nazzetta.
Posted in 3D Printing Technology
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