Robotics technologies for additive manufacturing

In the past decades, the term “additive manufacturing (AM)” or “3D printing” has been gaining more and more well-known due to its capability of manufacturing objects with complex shapes and geometries. However, most of the conventional printing solutions provide only standard stacking up of layers in the vertical directions (2½D) printing instead of the full 3D motions. Due to its limitations of movements, the printing process would be difficult when building around support structures especially curved supports. Thus, to fully utilize the advantages of the full 3D motions, this project aims to explore the concept for integration of controllable robotic base into conventional additive manufacturing printers. The technical challenges in developing the robotic base including the hardware investigation and design, motion planning and control were discussed. Experiments were performed to demonstrate the robotic base’s capabilities. Lastly, recommendations of future work was also discussed in the last part of this report.Bachelor of Engineering (Mechanical Engineering