A 3D printer that can produce complex systems of bendy and rigid materials, such as a robotic hand or an artificial heart, could be used to make more lifelike robots.
at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich and his colleagues have developed a 3D printer that can produce systems with intricate mixtures of rigid and soft components using a similar technology to inkjet printers, by building up microscopically thin layers of up to four different plastics at once, each with unique properties. Unlike existing 3D printers, it uses cameras and lasers to ensure each layer is the correct thickness.
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They have used the printer to create biologically-inspired structures, such as a heart, a walking robot and a robotic hand with tendons and muscle-like features that can sense pressure changes and touch.
As well as soft parts for mechanical movement, the system can build in microscopic channels for fluids to move through, which are difficult to build in a conventional robot. Katzschmann hopes that the printer will eventually be able to embed electrical circuits or living cells in the products, for uses like medical implants.
鈥淭raditionally, we鈥檝e had lots of trade-offs where either we have really good material properties but then it鈥檚 quite difficult to interface different materials together,鈥� says at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, who was not involved in the work.
The new printer solves a lot of these problems, but creating the blueprints for structures with such a high level of complexity could also be challenging and introduce its own problems, says Gilday. 鈥淲e can make these really complex structures, but someone needs to sit down and design it first. People start becoming the problem rather than the technology, which is a very nice issue to have.鈥�
Nature
