Design and manufacturing of 6-axis stewart manipulator for extrudable material deposit

Abstract

Rapid prototyping is widely used for the production of plastic prototype and functional product. Filament extrusion based deposition is among the most frequently used technique called FDM. Although FDM is popularly used in 3D printing, there are limitation to this process. The major limitation includes use of support material for overhanging feature. Removal of the support material damages the surface finish of prototype and sometimes it overheats the model material to penetrate the support surface. Additionally, the processing time for removal of support material is high. Accordingly, a 6-axis deposition platform is proposed for the 3D printing.

In particular Gough-Stewart platform system is modified. The present work presents novel parallel manipulator, based on existing Gough-Stewart platform system. Inverse kinematics is also formulated for the motion manipulation and singularity analysis. Once the machine is manufactured, trials with different shapes and materials will be performed to test the capability of the process.