A Review on Development of Soft Gripper Using 4D Printing

Author(s):  
Ashutosh Singh ◽  
◽  
Ravi Butola ◽  
Jitendra Bhaskar ◽  

Improvements in soft robotics, materials, and flexible gripper technology made it possible for the soft grippers to advance rapidly. A brief analysis of soft robotic grippers featuring various material collections, physical rules, and system architectures is provided here. Soft gripping is divided into three technologies, enabling gripping with: a) actuation, b) material used, and c) Use of 3D printing in fabricating grippers. An informative analysis is provided of every form. Similar to stiff grippers, flexible and elastic end-effectors may also grab or control a broader variety of objects. The inherent versatility of the materials is increasingly being used to study advanced materials and soft structures, particularly silicone elastomers, shape-memory materials, active polymers, and gels, in the development of compact, simple, and more versatile grippers. For future work, enhanced structures, techniques, and senses play a prominent part.

Author(s):  
Zheng Xu ◽  
Yujie Chen ◽  
Chi Chen ◽  
Zhen Chen ◽  
Yu Tong Guo ◽  
...  

Abstract Programmable and reconfigurable artificial muscles are highly promising and desirable for applications, including soft robotics, flexible devices, and biomedical devices. However, the combination of considerable strain and high energy...


Soft Matter ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 14 (5) ◽  
pp. 765-772 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jheng-Wun Su ◽  
Xiang Tao ◽  
Heng Deng ◽  
Cheng Zhang ◽  
Shan Jiang ◽  
...  

There is a significant need of advanced materials that can be fabricated into functional devices with defined three-dimensional (3D) structures for application in tissue engineering, flexible electronics, and soft robotics.


Author(s):  
Zhicheng Rong ◽  
Chang Liu ◽  
Yingbin Hu

Abstract In recent years, more and more attentions have been attracted on integrating three-dimensional (3D) printing with fields (such as magnetic field) or innovating new methods to reap the full potential of 3D printing in manufacturing high-quality parts and processing nano-scaled composites. Among all of newly innovated methods, four-dimensional (4D) printing has been proved to be an effective way of creating dynamic components from simple structures. Common feeding materials in 4D printing include shape memory hydrogels, shape memory polymers, and shape memory alloys. However, few attempts have been made on 4D printing of ceramic materials to shape ceramics into intricate structures, owing to ceramics’ inherent brittleness nature. Facing this problem, this investigation aims at filling the gap between 4D printing and fabrication of complex ceramic structures. Inspired by swelling-and-shrinking-induced self-folding, a 4D printing method is innovated to add an additional shape change of ceramic structures by controlling ZrO2 contents and patterns. Experimental results evidenced that by deliberately controlling ZrO2 contents and patterns, 3D-printed ceramic parts would undergo bending and twisting during the sintering process. To demonstrate the capabilities of this method, more complex structures (such as a flower-like structure) were fabricated. In addition, functional parts with magnetic behaviors were 4D-printed by incorporating iron into the PDMS-ZrO2 ink.


2019 ◽  
Vol 6 (6) ◽  
pp. 1244-1250 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chen Yang ◽  
Manish Boorugu ◽  
Andrew Dopp ◽  
Jie Ren ◽  
Raymond Martin ◽  
...  

Digital 3D printing with a shape memory polymer is utilized to create mechanical metamaterials exhibiting dramatic and reversible changes in stiffness, geometry, and functions.


Author(s):  
Ye Kang ◽  
Kwangwon Kim ◽  
Jaehyung Ju

Cellular materials have two important properties: structures and mechanisms. This property enables one to design structures with proper stiffness and flexibility. Recent advance in 3D printing technologies enable engineers to manufacture complex cellular structures. In addition, use of smart materials, e.g., shape memory polymers (SMPs), for 3D printing enables us to construct mesostructures actively responsive to environmental stimuli with a programmable function, which may be termed ‘4D Printing’ referring to additional dimension on time-dependent shape change after 3D printing. The objective of this study is to design and synthesize active reconfigurable cellular materials, which enables the advance of technology on intelligent reconfigurable cellular structures with 4D printing. A two-layer hinge of a CPS functions through a programmed thermal expansion mismatch between two layers and shape memory effect of an SMP. Starting with thermo-mechanical constitutive modeling of a compliant porous hinge consisting of laminated elastomer composites, macroscopic behaviors of a reconfigurable compliant porous structure (CPS) will be constructed using the strain energy method. A finite element (FE) based simulation equipped with a user subroutine will be implemented with ABAQUS/Standard to simulate time-dependent thermo mechanical behaviors of a CPS. The designed CPS with polymers shows an extremely high negative Poisson’s ratio (∼ −120) and negative thermal expansion coefficient (−2,530 × 10−6/C). When programmed with an appropriate thermo-mechanical procedure, the hinge of the CPS bends either in positive and negative sign, which enables to tailor the CPS into desired intermediate and final configurations, ending up with achieving a reconfigurable CPS. This paper demonstrates that actively reconfigurable compliant cellular materials (CCMs) with CPSes can be used for next-generation materials design in terms of tailoring mechanical properties such as modulus, strength, yield strain, Poisson’s ratios and thermal expansion coefficient together with programmable characteristics.


2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (10) ◽  
pp. 105305 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wubin Shan ◽  
Yifan Chen ◽  
Mo Hu ◽  
Shigang Qin ◽  
Peng Liu

Engineering ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 3 (5) ◽  
pp. 663-674 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amelia Yilin Lee ◽  
Jia An ◽  
Chee Kai Chua

Author(s):  
N. Dresler ◽  
A. Ulanov ◽  
M. Aviv ◽  
D. Ashkenazi ◽  
A. Stern

The 4D additive manufacturing processes are considered today as the "next big thing" in R&D. The aim of this research is to provide two examples of commercial PLA based shape memory polymer (SMP) objects printed on an open-source 3D printer in order to proof the feasibility of such novel 4D printing process. To that purpose, a PLA based filament of eSUN (4D filament e4D-1white, SMP) was chosen, and two applications, a spring and a vase, were designed by 3D-printing with additive manufacturing (AM) fused filament fabrication (FFF) technique. The 4D-printed objects were successfully produced, the shape memory effect and their functionality were demonstrated by achieving the shape-memory cycle of programming, storage and recovery.


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