Mechanism design using rapid prototyping.pdfVIP

TENTH WORLD CONGRESS ON THE THEORY OF MACHINES AND MECHANISMS Oulu, Finland, June 20-24, 1999 MECHANISM DESIGN USING RAPID PROTOTYPING Munshi Alam1, Constantinos Mavroidis1, Noshir Langrana1 and Philippe Bidaud2 1 Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Rutgers University, The State University of New Jersey 98 Brett Rd., Piscataway, NJ 08854, USA Tel: 732 - 445 – 0732 and 732 – 445 - 3618, Fax: 732 - 445 - 3124 E-mail: mavro@jove.rutgers.edu, langrana@caip.rutgers.edu 2 Laboratoire de Robotique de Paris, CNRS-UPMC-UVSQ 10-12 Avenue de l Europe, 78140 Velizy FRANCE Abstract In this paper Rapid Prototyping techniques have been used to fabricate mechanisms and evaluate their design faster. Prototypes of revolute, prismatic and spherical joints have been built using the Stereolithography machine SLA 190 of the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Rutgers University. In addition, a three legged six degree of freedom rapid prototype of a parallel manipulator has been fabricated. These rapidly prototyped mechanisms and joints have been fabricated in one step, without requiring assembly while they maintained their desired mobility. As far as the authors are aware, this is the first time that multi-joint, multi-degree-of-freedom mechanisms have been rapidly prototyped without requiring any assembly after their fabrication. Keywords: Rapid Prototyping, Design of Mechanisms 1 Introduction The design of mechanisms and manipulators has been studied by many researchers and engineers. Mathematical methods have been proposed to find a mechanism’s significant parameters to perform a task that is described using kinematic and dynamic specifications [Sandor and Erdman, 1984 and Erdman and Sandor, 1991]. Once a mechanism design is proposed, it is always desired to have a design evaluation before any full prototype is built so that design changes are made fast and cost effectively. Even though powerful three dimensional Computer Aided Design and Dynamic Ana