Evaluation of Additive Manufacturing Processes in Fabrication of Personalized Robot

Customers increasingly participate in the design stage of creating personalized products. Additive manufacturing (aka 3D printing) has become a popular enabler of personalization. In this paper we evaluate fabrication of an open source robot arm in terms of cost, build time, dimensional and locational accuracy, and mechanical properties. The mechanical components of the table-top robot were fabricated using two different AM processes: Fused deposition modelling (FDM) and Material Jetting (Polymer Jetting). Reducing the infill density to 50% in the FDM process resulted in a slight decrease in building time, material cost and tensile strength, and caused a 95% drop in yield strength. Simulation of the robot’s mechanical assembly using its CAD model based on the expected tolerances of the components, resulted in estimation of the end-effector positioning accuracy to be 0.01 to 0.22 mm.