Kinematic Design of Modular Reconfigurable In-Parallel Robots
Autonomous Robots
A virtual manufacturing system for components made of a multiphase perfect material
Computer-Aided Design
Multi-material virtual prototyping for product development and biomedical engineering
Computers in Industry
A versatile virtual prototyping system for rapid product development
Computers in Industry
Integrated Computer-Aided Engineering
Robot-assisted rapid prototyping for ice structures
ICRA'09 Proceedings of the 2009 IEEE international conference on Robotics and Automation
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Proliferation of layered manufacturing (LM) in various sectors has been calling for fabrication of large, complex products with more materials and efficiency. We address this issue by integrating reconfigurable manufacturing (RM) with LM. This paper first analyses the benefits of such integration, and then presents a virtual prototyping system with reconfigurable actuators (VPRA) that can increase the number of materials, speed, and build volume to improve the efficiency and flexibility of multi-material layered manufacturing (MMLM). The VPRA system offers a test bed for design, visualization, and validation of MMLM facilities and processes. It takes advantage of the convenient graphics platform of SolidWorks(TM) for constructing a virtual MMLM facility by selecting reconfigurable actuators from predefined templates. The characteristics, including the dimensions and relative spatial constraints, of the actuators can be conveniently configured to suit design requirements. The mechanism and the operation process of the resulting MMLM facility can then be simulated and validated through digital fabrication of complex objects. Case studies are presented to demonstrate some possible applications of the VPRA system. Overall, the VPRA system gives insights into the characteristics of a reconfigurable MMLM system, which can be subsequently materialized for physical fabrication of multi-material objects. This approach highlights a possible direction for development of MMLM technology.