Pillow Soft Robotic Actuator

prusaprinters

This is an airtight soft robotic actuator designed to be chained together to construct a soft robotic earthworm that can move via peristaltic motion. Please see print settings and post-printing notes for details on the fabrication as this uses some unconventional methods and settings. Print instructionsCategory: Robotics Print Settings Printer Brand: Prusa Printer: Prusa Mk2 Rafts: No Supports: No Resolution: .2 Infill: 100% Filament: NinjaTek or Recreus Ninjaflex or Filaflex Notes: Use settings you know are reliable with ninja flex on your printer then lower the nozzle and increase the flow rate and temperature until you get airtight layers. This will take some experimentation. my flow ended up at around 140%. Use 2 perimeters and 2 bottom layers. For Printing the top separately: Post-Printing Top Layer If you are printing the top separately you will need to fuse it on to the top of the actuator. I use a cheap soldering iron with temperature control and turn it all the way down, then with the top in position apply heat to the perimeter and the center divider to fuse the top on. Be careful to keep the iron moving and not to stay in one spot to avoid melting all the way through. Be aware that higher temperature above 230 can cause the plastic to degrade, while this is not a huge issue to the function of this print it means that it may give off fumes that are likely not good to breathe in so please do this outside and/or use a mask for organic vapors. (Read MSDS for your filament for more info) How I Designed This I experimented quite a bit to get to this design. For more information on this visit my website: https://nwlauer.github.io/Projects/3DPrintedSoftRobots.html I used onshape to model the actuator the link to this is bellow https://cad.onshape.com/documents/3c669edf96e152dec33955a7/w/b0888245c5fd9d2512150394/e/fc91afc5c4801dd98c8136da