Design and simulation of a large-scale 3D printing system using truncated tetrahedral tensegrity robot

Abstract

"We designed a new large-scale 3D printing system using a tetrahedral tensegrity robot with six struts connected with the cable. Three struts that form a bottom triangle are carbon pipes, and the other three diagonal struts are made of a linear actuator. As we adjust each actuator's length, we can control the position of the convergence point created by these linear actuators, which move in parallel with the extruder. To figure out the validity of our printing system, we simulated the extruder's movement using a computer-aided design (CAD) program. We controlled the extruder moving along several simple geometries: vertical line, horizontal line, cube geometry, and spherical geometry. We analyzed the desired length change of linear actuators and figured out the feasibility. We also simplified the formula between the extruder position and the linear actuator configuration. This paper provides the possibility and validity of designing a 3D printing system with tensegrity robots. ? 2021 ASCE.