Design and development of a parallel robot for 3D printing

Abstract

Current 3D printers in the market use a stack-up configuration that contributes to the slow printing process. To tackle this problem, a delta robot configuration can be implemented to provide a solution; delta robots are known for their high speed maneuvers and this project investigates the use of delta robot configuration in 3D printing.

Experiments are to be conducted on a built prototype to verify the feasibility and design of the robot, the speed of printing operation, and the resultant product quality.

Experiments conducted in this project verify that this configuration is feasible. The positioning accuracy of the end effector of the robot is accurate, but nonetheless further studies have to be made on improving it to a higher precision to ensure high print quality.

The robot, however, was not able to carry out any extrusion as the motor was not strong enough to support the full load of the robot during printing operation. Hence, results on the potential of delta robots in 3D printing were inconclusive; future work will need to look into the either a new design of the prototype or better hardware so that printing operations can take place and, thus, experiments can be conducted.