This study addresses the need for assistive technology of people who lost control of their upper limbs as well as people who are undergoing rehabilitation. Loss of upper limb control causes lack of functionality and social acceptability especially for many people in developing countries with fewer available technology. The study develops a modern but low-cost prosthetic device that can be controlled by users using a smartphone and can be rapidly manufactured using three-dimensional printing (3D printing) of plastic materials. The development of the prosthetic device includes designing the mechanical and electronic parts, programming the Arduino board and Android application for control, simulation and analysis of 3D printed parts most subjected to stress, and 3D printing the parts under different settings. The device was tested in terms of time spent and capacity of lifting varying loads when not worn and when worn by users. The device can effectively lift 500 grams of load in one second for a person weighing between 50 to 60 kilograms.
The adoption of Additive Manufacturing (AM) is continuously growing due to its capability to produce complex shapes which leads to the dependence of manufacturers on AM to replace conventional manufacturing processes. One important focus of research now is on the accuracy of 3D printed products produced via the Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM). These products have great potential to be applied to tooling and other rapid prototyping applications. The aim of this study is to assess the accuracy of 3D printed Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene (ABS) through manual measurements of dimensions. Several sets of samples with cubic shapes were printed and measured using a digital micrometer to evaluate the dimensional accuracy of the 3d-printed parts. A 22 full factorial design was employed to investigate the effects of infill density and layer thickness on the dimensional accuracy of ABS parts.
Stereolithography (SLA) is an Additive Manufacturing technology which converts liquid resins to solid parts layer-by-layer by selectively curing the liquid resin using a (laser) light source. The mechanical properties SLA 3D printed parts are not yet determined or estimated before printing. Thus, this study aims to identify the optimum 3D printing configuration based on the indentation hardness properties of SLA-printed polymer parts. Taguchi approach was used in identifying the optimum 3D printing configuration wherein different factors were considered to meet the requirements of the orthogonal arrays. Five pieces of 3D printed test blocks with 9 indentation points on the surface were prepared for each factor. The tests followed ASTM D785 – 03 using Rockwell Scale B. The result for the optimum 3D printing configuration of SLA 3D printed material were concluded as the values with the highest Rockwell Hardness Number.
This paper discusses some basic metrology considerations when 3D printing. The importance of ensuring correct measurements is highlighted especially for practical applications. The last part of the paper presents sample dimensional measurements of 3D-printed parts with varying sizes, infill density and layer thickness. Different cube sizes of 10 mm3, 15 mm3, and 20 mm3 has been produced using a commercially-available 3D printer. Acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS) has been used for the experiments. Important observations and insights are presented.
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