3D Silicone Printer

Hello!

Welcome to our 3D Silicone Printer project page. Our team has been working on this project for the last 2 years and we finally succeed to 3D print static and dynamic silicone objects. More importantly we bring the 3D printed soft robots alive.

Here is a teaser video of 3D Silicone Printer in action and functional soft robots that we have printed! 

If you like this video and want to replicate what we have achieved, this page will help you to do that step by step! Lets take a look at what you are going to experience at each section.

3D Printed Soft Robots and Extruder
3D Printed Soft Robots and Extruder

 

Overview of the Sections

Background: In this section you will learn about what are other 3D soft material printers and what is the difference between us and them.

3D Silicone Printer Setup: In this section you will see different 3D printer options that you can use as a base 3D printer for this project. And some of the links that you can purchase them from. I tried my best to provide the cheapest 3D printer options in the market so that the overall budget for this project goes down while keeping the quality high. Later you will find the required files and shopping links for the extruder assembly, pumps and cartridges. 

Material Preparation: In this section you will learn how to prepare your own cartridges so that you will be able to come up with your print material.

Required Softwares and ProfilesIf you are familiar with 3D printing you will definitely know the value of this section. To 3D print silicone objects current 3D printer profiles are not enough. Due to this fact we provide you the print profile that you will need. Also the software that will help you to generate gcode files.

How to start your first print: In this section we will print your first silicone object together and we will go over all the steps that you need for a successful print. Also you will find the stl files of these objects and soft robots that we have 3D printed from silicone material.

Design rules for succesful prints: As you know all 3D printers have limitations. And our 3D silicone printer has limitations too. This section will help you to design your silicone robots accordingly so that your silicone prints will be successful. 

Future developmentsAs you know all the projects have beginnings and they continue to develop. Our project is keep evolving as well and we are increasing our print capability. Soon you will see great news from us and we will keep you posted. In this section we will give some updates about the news and current developments.

Troubleshooting and contact info: As the developer of the project I know it is very tricky and hard to come up with solutions to the problems that will emerge. You will try your best to make it work, but sometimes machine insist on problems. In this section I will try my best to talk about possible solutions to common problems. Also I will release my contact infromation so that you can contact me if you have unresolved problems with your printer.

Note: Each section will have their shopping lists

The Team and mLab Robotics

Our soft robotics team and mLab Robotics is located in Oregon State University. Here is our team members who mainly worked on developing 3D silicone printer project. Osman Dogan Yirmibesoglu (yirmibeo@oregonstate.edu) and John Morrow (Both Ph.D. Candidates). We would like to thank and introduce our other team members who helped us with their valuable knowledge throughout the conference paper sections. First, we would like to thank Stephanie Walker for her contribution to silicone material characterization, new pump and nozzle selections. Second, we would like to thank Walker Gosrich for CAD drawings and initial assembly of the printer base, Reece Aidan Canizares for preparing the molded 4 channel tentacles and supporting the experiments with them, Hansung Kim for cartridge preparations for the 3D print experiments. Third we would like to thank to Uranbileg Daalkhaijav for her support and contributions on editing the final version of the paper, Chloe Fleming and Callie Branyan for their support with penumatic board controls in our experiments. Last but not least we would like to thank our increadable advisor Yigit Menguc for all his support and guidence.

contributions

Also, we would like to introduce you our mLab team. If you would like to learn more about us please visit our mlab website: https://www.mlabrobotics.com/

mLab members

 

Research Paper

Direct 3D Printing of Silicone Elastomer Soft Robots and Their Performance Comparison with Molded Counterparts

Osman Dogan Yirmibesoglu, John Morrow, Stephanie Walker, Walker Gosrich, Reece Aidan Canizares, Hansung Kim, Uranbileg Daalkhaijav, Chloe Fleming, Callie Branyan and, Y. Mengüç, IEEE-RAS International Conference on Soft Robotics (ROBOSOFT), April 2018.