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8. Soft robotics

What the week looked like

Takeaways from Global Session

Checklist for the week

Personal thoughts and Ideas

Research & Inspiration

  1. Adriana Cabrer (Website + Youtube)
  2. Montserrat Ciges (Website + Youtube)
  3. Saskia Helinska (Website)
  4. Research Papers (MIT + Others)
  5. Autodesk Instructables (Website)
  6. Soft Robotics Toolkit (Youtube)
  7. Open Soft Machines (Website)
  8. Adrian Torres (Website)
  9. Fab24 Conference, Mexico (Website)

Tools & Materials

TOOLS:
MATERIALS:

Work Flow:

3D Printing Existing Designs

. . .

Pneumatic Activation Arm Brace Initial Design

. . .

Building Arm Brace Design

Lasercutting Design

Preparing for Pouring

. . .

Ecoflex Pouring

3D Printed Molds

Laser Cut Molds

. . .

De-molding

3D Printed Molds

Laser Cut Molds

. . .

Sticking the Molds together

3D Printed Molds

Laser Cut Molds

. . .

Inflating the Final Molds

3D Printed Molds

Laser Cut Molds

. . .

Explorations with Heat Activated Vinyl

. . .

Pneumatic Activation Arm Brace Updated Design

. . .

Testing Updated Desgin in Heat Activated Vinyl

. . .

Building Arm Brace Updated Design

Lasercutting Updated Design

Preparing for Pouring

. . .

Pouring Updated Laser Cut Molds

. . .

De-molding Updated Design Mold

. . .

Sticking Updated Molds

. . .

Inflating Final Updated Molds

. . .

Learnings

IDEAL Work Flow:

  1. Explore and play with available designs in Heat Activated Vinyl
  2. Once there is clarity on how these shapes work, draw up the Initial Design Draft for Self Design
  3. Test this Initial Design in Heat Activated Vinyl
  4. Incorporate the learnings from the previous step and update the drawing
  5. Make the laser cut drawing and hope for the best

Setting up Heat Activated Vinyl

I had never worked with Heat Activated Vinyl before. So just before i was about to begin with it, i ended up tearing a part of the sheet to test the heat settings. Only then did i realise that the vinyl has a peel off layer and acts like a sticker on that side.

Secondly, we used a home iron used for ironing clothes. You need to KEEP a Baking Sheet BETWEEN the vinyl and the hot surface. Else, the Vinly WILL STICK to the iron and ruin it. I never knew that Baking Paper is THAT resiliant as a material!

During the test run, i had put the iron on super hot and the vinyl got super fragile. So for the initial explorations, i put the iron on a less hot setting. However, THAT was a MISTAKE that we realised when we inflated the designs. My tip would be to KEEP the IRON HOT. Once the vinyl cools down, it will be fine.

Another learning we had was how important the airway chanel is in each design. Ensure that the Baking Paper design has an inflow airway chanel.

Also, while inflating the vinyl, it WILL NOT inflate to it best at the start. BE PATIENT and keep pumping air a few times. Once all the airchannels have had some stretch, the vinyl will start actuating properly.

A tip here is to inflate the vinyl on both sides of the baking paper. We found best results once both sides had air pass put through it a few times, for the final movement to work properly.

Material Selection for Laser Cutting

Acryllic was the most accessible material and it worked really well. However, we didn't find any details on the thickness of the materials suggested.

Based on our experience, we used 2mm sheets and found that the ideal width of the mould works well with this selection, not too thick and not too thin.

Preparing the Laser Cut Drawings

Since we didn't find details of the preferable material thickness, we took our chances with setting up our drawing. After the First attempt, we learnt thriugh trial and error, and the drawing uploaded here have the relevant designs prepped and composed for 2mm acryllic sheets.

2 base layers: 1 for the base with the design + 1 for the base cover on the other side

3 boundary layers: 2 for attaching to the base with the design (for the perfect height) + 1 for putting on top of the base cover on teh other side

2 design layers: 1 for use + 1 for backup

Handling the Molds

We had a silicon leak happen on both the 3D printed moulds. Luckily we had kept a plastic sheet on our table before we started working, and and A4 sheet below each mold we were pouring into. It helped us indentify where exactly the leaks were coming from, and also helped during cleanup.

For the Lasercut molds, we needed a LOT of Feviquick, more than we had expected. And the glue took a while to dry as well. So we figured out 10 mins time slots to work on the mold. It was also important to seal ALL the EDGES of the various layers to ensure there is NO LEAK.

Fabrication Files

People to thank for this week

This week in emojis: 🤩😲🤌🥺🫡🤝🧑‍🍳🤳🧑‍💻😅
get inspired!

Check out and research alumni pages to betetr understand how to document and get inspired

Add your fav alumni's pages as references

This model 1 was obtained by..

The laser cut nesting 2 was created using..

footnote fabrication files

Fabrication files are a necessary element for evaluation. You can add the fabrication files at the bottom of the page and simply link them as a footnote. This was your work stays organised and files will be all together at the bottom of the page. Footnotes are created using [ ^ 1 ] (without spaces, and referenced as you see at the last chapter of this page) You can reference the fabrication files to multiple places on your page as you see for footnote nr. 2 also present in the Gallery.

3D Models

upload the 3d models of MakeHuman, Final 3d modelled body, 3D Scans, etc

Dita's Gown by Francis Bitonti Studio on Sketchfab

This schematic [^4] was obtained by..

This tutorial [^5] was created using..

From Youtube

Fabrication files

  1. File: xxx ↩

  2. File: xxx ↩