Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the process of fused filament fabrication (FFF) of a compliant gripper (CG) using thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU) material. The paper studies the applicability of different CG designs and the efficiency of some design parameters.

Design/methodology/approach

After reviewing a number of different papers, two designs were selected for a number of exploratory experiments. Using design of experiments (DOE) techniques to identify important design parameters. Finally, the efficiency of the parts was investigated.

Findings

The research finds that a simpler design sacrifices some effectiveness in exchange for a remarkable decrease in production cost. Decreasing infill percentage of previous designs and 3D printing them, out of TPU, experimenting with different parameters yields functional products. Moreover, the paper identified some key parameters for further optimization attempts of such prototypes.

Research limitations/implications

The cost of conducting FFF experiments for TPU increases dramatically with product size, number of parameters studied and the number of experiments. Therefore, all three of these factors had to be kept at a minimum. Further confirmatory experiments encouraged.

Originality/value

This paper addresses an identified need to investigate applications of FFF and TPU in manufacturing functional efficient flexible mechanisms, grippers specifically. While most research focused on designing for increased performance, some research lacks discussion on design philosophy, as well as manufacturing issues. As the needs for flexible grippers vary from high-performance grippers to lower performance grippers created for specific functions/conditions, some effectiveness can be sacrificed to reduce cost, reduce complexity and improve applicability in different robotic assemblies and environments.

中文翻译：

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使用 FFF 和 TPU 制作顺应性夹具原​​型

目的

本文的目的是研究使用热塑性聚氨酯 (TPU) 材料熔丝制造 (FFF) 柔性夹具 (CG) 的工艺。本文研究了不同CG设计的适用性以及一些设计参数的效率。

设计/方法论/途径

在审查了许多不同的论文后，选择了两种设计进行一些探索性实验。使用实验设计 (DOE) 技术来确定重要的设计参数。最后，研究了零件的效率。

发现

研究发现，更简单的设计会牺牲一些效率，以换取生产成本的显着降低。减少先前设计的填充百分比，并用 TPU 进行 3D 打印，尝试不同的参数，生产出功能性产品。此外，本文还确定了此类原型进一步优化尝试的一些关键参数。

研究局限性/影响

对 TPU 进行 FFF 实验的成本随着产品尺寸、研究参数数量和实验数量的增加而急剧增加。因此，所有这三个因素必须保持在最低限度。鼓励进一步的验证性实验。

原创性/价值

本文解决了研究 FFF 和 TPU 在制造功能性高效柔性机构（特别是夹具）中的应用的明确需求。虽然大多数研究侧重于提高性能的设计，但一些研究缺乏对设计理念以及制造问题的讨论。由于对柔性夹具的需求各不相同，从高性能夹具到针对特定功能/条件创建的低性能夹具，可以牺牲一些有效性来降低成本、降低复杂性并提高在不同机器人组件和环境中的适用性。