Researching the Properties of a 3D-Printed Living Material Containing C. Reinhardtii

Incorporating living cells into a non-living matrix is one of the many possible steps that can be undertaken to stop climate change. Especially, photosynthetic organisms have a promising future in material design as they can capture atmospheric carbon dioxide and ’ breathe’ oxygen. This research dives into unravelling the properties of a...

Design and evaluation of 3D-printed fluid-controlled actuators with integrated valves

Fluid-controlled actuators are widely used in lower limb prostheses. Most fluid-controlled actuators have valves integrated into the cylinder systems and require complex manufacturing steps, making these systems expensive. A cost-effective production method for these complex actuator valve systems is 3D-printing. The goal of this research is to...

Design and fabrication of 3D-printed hard-soft interfaces made from PLA and hydrogel

The mechanical properties of biological hard-soft interfaces change gradually over a small surface area to prevent the formation of stress concentrations through variations in the interface’s chemical composition, microstructure and geometry. The bone-tendon/ligament and bone-cartilage interface are the most prominent hard-soft interfaces within...

Future proofing the mold making process for Royal Delft ceramics

This graduation report presents a new mold making approach for Royal<br/>Delft. The traditional production trajectory starts with a positive model and<br/>pouring plaster mold parts onto it one by one, producing a negative casting<br/>mold for one shape. This new proposal takes the plaster mold parts as a<br/>starting point, combining them into...

Exploring the performance of 3D-printed custom piston-cylinder systems

<b>Background</b> Pneumatic actuators are widely used in applications like (medical) robots, or prosthetics. They require tight tolerances to keep them leakage-free. Over the last decade 3D-printing, or additive manufacturing, has emerged as a cost-effective production method in these applications.<br/><b>Objective</b> The goal of this research...

A Proportionally Controlled Microvalve using a Piezoelectric Unimorph Microactuator

Microvalves are important flow-control devices in many standalone and integrated microfluidic applications. PDMS-based (Polydimethylsiloxane) pneumatic microvalves are the most commonly used type for research purposes, but they require large peripheral connections and cannot be used for controlling gases due to the high gas permeability of PDMS....

3D Gradient Printing of Energetic Multi-Materials

The performance of gun and rocket propellants, which consist of energetic materials, is largely determined by their geometry and composition. Con- ventional production methods limit the performance by putting constraints on both. With additive manufacturing, or 3D-printing, there are signi- cantly fewer geometry constraints and together with the...

Fused Deposition Modelling in Industry 4.0: Extend the capabilities of fused deposition modelling to industry 4.0 standard

The fourth Industrial Revolution stands for the current trends of automation and data exchange in manufacturing technologies - which comes with a considerable amount of opportunities as most manufacturers attempt to stay ahead of the competition. One of the possibilities is the addition of FDM printing - one of the types of additive...

Multiscale 3D-printing of a suspended hollow microfluidic device

Suspended hollow micro-cantilevers have been employed for zeptogram (10^-21 g) mass measurements, pipetting of femtoliter<br/>(10^-15 L) volumes, and studies on mechanical interaction with single cells. The main fabrication method of these devices is by standard clean room micro/nano fabrication techniques, however, they are inherently planar,...

The development of a hybrid manufacturing system that combines multimaterial 3D-printing with silicone casting for the development of soft robotic parts

This master thesis discusses the development of a hybrid manufacturing system that combines multi-material 3D-printing with silicone casting. The parties involved in this project were soft robotics research group at the University of Technology Delft and Ultimaker. Ultimaker served an advisory role and helped in providing the needed hardware....

The integration of fused deposition modelling within conventional production processes

This thesis report covers the graduation project that is done in cooperation with Ultimaker. The goal of this project was to research the potential of 3D-printing as an addition to traditional manufacturing, aimed at the production of customized and/or small series of products. There are 7 different manufacturers approached and interviewed on...

Obstacle and Cliff Detection for Robotics Applications Using Miniturized Sonar and IR Distance Triangulation: Environment Observation Module For The Deci Zebro

This is a bachelor thesis about the design and development of an observation and sensing module for the Deci Zebro robot that is being developed at the EEMCS faculty of Delft University of Technology.<br/>This part of the thesis is about the development of a cliff- and obstacle detection system, as well as the...

Soft Robotics: 3D-printing air pressure sensors and actuators

A robotic hand to demonstrate how the 3D-printing of flexible air chambers to create air pressure sensors and actuators can be used to improve human-robot interaction.

Control of a robotic arm: Application to on-surface 3D-printing

3D-printing, also called Additive Manufacturing, is a rapidly developing technique in manufacturing. Nowadays 20% of the printed products is a ?nal product, the rest is used in Rapid Prototyping. It is claimed that in 2020, 50% of the printed output is a ?nal product. The overall goal of this research is to print 3D-structures on curved surfaces...

Concrete in an AM process: Freeform concrete processing

This thesis examines the additive manufacturing (AM) of concrete, its possibilities, feasibility and advantages over existing techniques. The first part generally focuses on the characteristic properties of concrete that are important and how they relate to an AM method, for instance aggregates and reinforcement. After this extensive...

The Structural Feasibility of 3D-printing houses using printable polymers

At this point in time, 3D-printing techniques in general, but especially applied for the building industry, still are in a phase of early experiments. One of the experimental attempts is to print a full-scale, three-story high, house in Amsterdam, using an up scaled version of a FDM-printer that is able to print blocks of 1.8 x 1.8 x 3.0 meters...

Design of a Compliant, Multi-Phalanx Underactuated Prosthetic Finger

Highly advanced robotic hand prostheses are praised for their impressive grasping and pinching capabilities. Nevertheless, a high demand remains for grasping mechanisms that are cheaper to produce, easier to assemble and lower in overall maintenance. In this paper, the idea of creating a 3D printable underactuated grasper was realized to fulfill...