The product, invented at the University of Michigan was developed by the spinoff company Ulendo.
Vibrations during 3D printing either slow down the process or warp the parts, but new software could enable manufacturers to keep up the speed without sacrificing accuracy.
The product, invented at the University of Michigan was developed by the spinoff company Ulendo.
The software essentially serves as a translator between the commands that would print the part in a perfect world, and how the machine needs to compensate for vibrations in the real world. It works for printers that mechanically move a printhead.
“If you want to reduce vibration in a moving object, most times you can do that by slowing down. But as 3D printing is already very slow, that solution creates another problem,” says Chinedum Okwudire, U-M associate professor of mechanical engineering and founder of Ulendo. “Our solution allows you to print fast without sacrificing quality.”
As a result, printers could double their speed without consuming much more energy, potentially reducing the cost per printed part as well.
The Ulendo software is called FBS, which stands for Filtered B Splines. That technical name refers to the mathematical function Okwudire’s team used to translate the machine commands from the ideal expectation to commands that would compensate for vibration in the 3D printer.
“Say you want a 3D printer to travel straight, but due to vibration, the motion travels upward. The FBS algorithm tricks the machine by telling it to follow a path downward, and when it tries to follow that path, it travels straight,” Okwudire says.
Okwudire first began thinking about software solutions for vibrations while working in industry, faced with a high-precision milling machine tool that was vibrating. His team couldn’t stiffen the machine to prevent vibrations, so they were forced to slow it down.
Beginning at U-M as a professor in 2011, Okwudire had the freedom to design software that could overcome machine vibrations. Then in 2017, a mechanical engineering graduate student from Okwudire’s lab implemented the software on a 3D printer.
When the research was highlighted with a YouTube video, commenters made the market for the solution apparent, and Ulendo was born through Innovation Partnerships at U-M. Much of the commercial development was funded through an MTRAC grant from the Michigan Economic Development Corporation and a Small Business Innovation Research grant from the National Science Foundation.
“Members of the 3D printing industry have the same jaw-dropping reaction I had when I first heard about how this technology results in a printer operating at two times the speed and 10 times the acceleration,” says Ulendo CEO Brenda Jones.
The University of Michigan has a financial interest in Ulendo.
M&K has more than three decades of precision manufacturing experience.
In a move that strengthens the reach of its precision medical manufacturing capabilities, ARCH Medical Solutions Corp. has acquired M&K Engineering of Woburn, Massachusetts. Located just outside Boston, M&K has more than three decades of precision manufacturing experience serving the medical, aerospace, and defense industries. FDA- and ITAR-registered with an impressive equipment list featuring multiple Swiss machines and robotic automation, M&K is a valuable addition providing vertically integrated support backed by a knowledgeable team. M&K Engineering becomes ARCH Medical & Aerospace – Woburn under the ARCH Medical Solutions umbrella.
Paul Barck, divisional president of ARCH Medical Solutions, is pleased with the opportunity to welcome M&K Engineering to ARCH Medical Solutions.
“The long heritage in precision machining of highly engineered medical devices and mission-critical components for the aerospace and defense industry combined with state-of the art machine tools, manufacturing processes and facilities bring new capabilities to our medical device manufacturing offering,” Barck said. “Through multiple visits to the M&K facility, I have been impressed with the team members and their creativity in developing highly efficient and automated manufacturing processes for machined components and other complex medical devices.”
Keith Bernardo, president of M&K Engineering, sees the move as a paramount step in achieving its goal of becoming a World Class Manufacturing Organization.
“The synergies between both companies are undeniable,” he said. “I could not be happier to have found a partner that embodies such a deep-rooted passion for its culture and team members. Finding ARCH made a difficult decision easy. I cannot express enough gratitude to Eli and his team. Partnering with ARCH Medical Solutions gives us access to a wide range of resources unmatched in our company’s history. We have achieved so much on our own and are looking forward to what we will be able to achieve within the ARCH network of capable facilities.”
Eli Crotzer, president and chief executive officer at ARCH, says the acquisition is a great fit for the accelerated growth plans of ARCH Medical Solutions.
“We are excited to have the M&K organization and team joining ARCH Medical Solutions,” Crotzer said. “M&K brings strong, vertically integrated capabilities to ARCH as well as several new customers that are a great fit for our growing medical contract manufacturing platform. We look forward to working with the M&K team to implement many of the best practices across ARCH Medical Solutions to drive accelerating growth.”
MIT researchers have created an interactive design pipeline that streamlines and simplifies the process of crafting a customized robotic hand with tactile sensors.
Typically, a robotics expert may spend months manually designing a custom manipulator, largely through trial-and-error. Each iteration could require new parts that must be designed and tested from scratch. By contrast, this new pipeline doesn’t require any manual assembly or specialized knowledge.
Akin to building with digital LEGOs, a designer uses the interface to construct a robotic manipulator from a set of modular components that are guaranteed to be manufacturable. The user can adjust the palm and fingers of the robotic hand, tailoring it to a specific task, and then easily integrate tactile sensors into the final design.
Once the design is finished, the software automatically generates 3D printing and machine knitting files for manufacturing the manipulator. Tactile sensors are incorporated through a knitted glove that fits snugly over the robotic hand. These sensors enable the manipulator to perform complex tasks, such as picking up delicate items or using tools.
“One of the most exciting things about this pipeline is that it makes design accessible to a general audience. Rather than spending months or years working on a design, and putting a lot of money into prototypes, you can have a working prototype in minutes,” says lead author Lara Zlokapa, who will graduate this spring with her master’s degree in mechanical engineering.
Joining Zlokapa on the paper are her advisors Pulkit Agrawal, professor in the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), and Wojciech Matusik, professor of electrical engineering and computer science. Other co-authors include CSAIL graduate students Yiyue Luo and Jie Xu, mechanical engineer Michael Foshey, and Kui Wu, a senior research scientist at Tencent America. The research is being presented at the International Conference on Robotics and Automation.
Mulling over modularity Before she began work on the pipeline, Zlokapa paused to consider the concept of modularity. She wanted to create enough components that users could mix and match with flexibility, but not so many that they were overwhelmed by choices.
She thought creatively about component functions, rather than shapes, and came up with about 15 parts that can combine to make trillions of unique manipulators.
The researchers then focused on building an intuitive interface in which the user mixes and matches components in a 3D design space. A set of production rules, known as graph grammar, controls how users can combine pieces based on the way each component, such as a joint or finger shaft, fits together.
“If we think of this as a LEGO kit where you have different building blocks you can put together, then the grammar might be something like ‘red blocks can only go on top of blue blocks’ and ‘blue blocks can’t go on top of green blocks.’ Graph grammar is what enables us to ensure that each and every design is valid, meaning it makes physical sense and you can manufacture it,” she explains.
Once the user has created the manipulator structure, they can deform components to customize it for a specific task. For instance, perhaps the manipulator needs fingers with slimmer tips to handle office scissors or curved fingers that can grasp bottles.
During this deformation stage, the software surrounds each component with a digital cage. Users stretch or bend components by dragging the corners of each cage. The system automatically constrains those movements to ensure the pieces still connect properly and the finished design remains manufacturable.
Fits like a glove After customization, the user identifies locations for tactile sensors. These sensors are integrated into a knitted glove that fits securely around the 3D-printed robotic manipulator. The glove is comprised of two fabric layers, one that contains horizontal piezoelectric fibers and another with vertical fibers. Piezoelectric material produces an electric signal when squeezed. Tactile sensors are formed where the horizontal and vertical piezoelectric fibers intersect; they convert pressure stimuli into electric signals that can be measured.
“We used gloves because they are easy to install, easy to replace, and easy to take off if we need to repair anything inside them,” Zlokapa explains.
Plus, with gloves, the user can cover the entire hand with tactile sensors, rather than embedding them in the palm or fingers, as is the case with other robotic manipulators (if they have tactile sensors at all).
With the design interface complete, the researchers produced custom manipulators for four complex tasks: picking up an egg, cutting paper with scissors, pouring water from a bottle, and screwing in a wing nut. The wing nut manipulator, for instance, had one lengthened and offset finger, which prevented the finger from colliding with the nut as it turned. That successful design required only two iterations.
The egg-grabbing manipulator never broke or dropped the egg during testing, and the paper-cutting manipulator could use a wider range of scissors than any existing robotic hand they could find in the literature.
But as they tested the manipulators, the researchers found that the sensors create a lot of noise due to the uneven weave of the knitted fibers, which hampers their accuracy. They are now working on more reliable sensors that could improve manipulator performance.
The researchers also want to explore the use of additional automation. Since the graph grammar rules are written in a way that a computer can understand, algorithms could search the design space to determine optimal configurations for a task-specific robotic hand. With autonomous manufacturing, the entire prototyping process could be done without human intervention, Zlokapa says.
“Now that we have a way for a computer to explore this design space, we can work on answering the question of, ‘Is the human hand the optimal shape for doing everyday tasks?’ Maybe there is a better shape? Or maybe we want more or fewer fingers, or fingers pointing in different directions? This research doesn’t fully answer that question, but it is a step in that direction,” she says.
This work was supported, in part, by the Toyota Research Institute, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, and an Amazon Robotics Research Award.
The CHIRON Group welcomed more than 1,200 visitors during an open house, offered new ideas to improve manufacturing practices.
At an open house in Tuttlingen, Germany, The CHIRON Group welcomed more than 1,200 visitors, offering them new ideas to improve their manufacturing practice – in the Chiron spirit of “Performance meets Precision.”
“We received much positive feedback from customers, partners and suppliers on the many new innovations and experiences at OPEN HOUSE, indicating that the CHIRON Group and the product portfolio has the right answers to current and future questions and demands,” says Carsten Liske, CEO of the CHIRON Group.
Visitors saw live demonstrations of combined friction stir welding (FSW) and machining processes; scalable manufacturing system for microtechnology; high-productivity twin-spindle machining – three new product innovations by the CHIRON Group, focus on productivity, efficiency, and sustainability.
High dynamics plus high stability plus large working chamber plus a twin-spindle machining center with a spindle distance of up to 1,200mm: The 22, 25, and 28 Series machines from the CHIRON Group set a new benchmark in terms of productivity and precision in this. As an example in practice, a DZ 25 P that has been in use for two years improved the manufacturing of automotive structural components. All in all, this turnkey solution has provided, according to the customer: "A stable and high-precision process with greatly increased output in comparison to the previous system."
“In addition to other double-spindle applications such as battery and e-motor housing manufacturing, these new series are also fully capable of massive machining applications starting with solid material,” says a Chiron spokesperson. “The extremely stable portal design forms the basis for high precision, while an efficient work area and user ergonomics enable flexible integration of a wide range of automation solutions for ideal productivity and process reliability.”
Scalable manufacturing system for microtechnology sector The CHIRON Group also demonstrated a groundbreaking manufacturing system for the microtechnology sector – a high-precision automated machining of workpieces with maximum dimensions of 50mm x 50mm x 50mm. It is based on the Micro5 from the Chiron FACTORY5 brand – a high-speed milling center with the power consumption of a coffee machine and the size of a refrigerator.
As a stand-alone solution, it is ideal for manufacturing smaller batch sizes in the medical technology sector. With to its six-pallet capacity, the Micro5 also supports production with minimal personnel.
The combination of a Micro5 with a Feed5 handling system will form an ideal plug-and-play solution once it enters series production.
“Feed5 offers increased autonomy for automated workpiece handling with a six-axis robot. Capacities for Micro5 and Feed5 projects are currently being expanded further,” the spokesperson says.
Combining FSW and machining – new innovation for sustainable mobility
One process that may not be particularly well known is Friction Stir Welding (FSW), a reliable, efficient, and sustainable manufacturing technology for creating pressure-tight and media-tight connections between two materials.
FSW is fundamentally suitable for applications involving joining aluminum or unrelated materials. The target workpieces for FSW currently include, in particular, battery trays and inverter housings as well as all electronic components that require heat dissipation alongside high requirements for leak-tightness. Friction stir welding technology also enables car manufacturers to relocate electrical modules to the wet areas of vehicles.
“The CHIRON Group boasts comprehensive expertise and practical user experience for machining these target workpieces,” the spokesman said. “By combining FSW and machining, the CHIRON Group is developing a forward-thinking innovation to provide benefits for users similar to those offered by other process combinations: Reduced space requirements, shorter cycle times and higher quality and productivity. The first projects using this combination are already underway at a technology partner company, resulting in the first turnkey machining centers such as the MILL 2000 machining center, offering combined FSW and milling technology.”
Using a common, commercially available pacifier, the researchers created a system that samples a baby’s saliva through microfluidic channels.
A wireless, bioelectronic pacifier could eliminate the need for invasive, twice-daily blood draws to monitor babies’ electrolytes in Newborn Intensive Care Units or NICUs. This smart pacifier can also provide more continuous monitoring of sodium and potassium ion levels. These electrolytes help alert caregivers if babies are dehydrated, a danger for infants, especially those born prematurely or with other health issues.
Researchers tested the smart pacifier on a selection of infants in a hospital, and the results were comparable to data gained from their normal blood draws. They detailed their findings in a proof-of-concept study published in the journal Biosensors and Bioelectronics.
“We know that premature babies have a better chance of survival if they get a high quality of care in the first month of birth,” says Jong-Hoon Kim, associate professor at the Washington State University School of Engineering and Computer Science and a co-corresponding author on the study. “Normally, in a hospital environment, they draw blood from the baby twice a day, so they just get two data points. This device is a non-invasive way to provide real-time monitoring of the electrolyte concentration of babies.”
The blood-draw method can be potentially painful for the infant, and it leaves big gaps in information since they are usually done once in the morning and once in the evening, Kim points out. Other methods have been developed to test an infants’ saliva for these electrolytes, but they involve bulky, rigid devices that require a separate sample collection.
Using a common, commercially available pacifier, the researchers created a system that samples a baby’s saliva through microfluidic channels. Whenever the baby has the pacifier in their mouth, saliva is naturally attracted to these channels, so the device doesn’t require any kind of pumping system.
The channels have small sensors inside that measure the sodium and potassium ion concentrations in the saliva. Then this data is relayed wirelessly using Bluetooth to the caregiver.
For the next step of development, the research team plans to make the components more affordable and recyclable. Then, they’ll work to set up a larger test of the smart pacifier to establish its efficacy.
Kim says development of this device is part of a broader effort to help make Newborn Intensive Care Units or (NICU) treatment less disruptive for their tiny patients.
“You often see NICU pictures where babies are hooked up to a bunch of wires to check their health conditions such as their heart rate, the respiratory rate, body temperature, and blood pressure,” Kim says. “We want to get rid of those wires.”
Along with Kim, co-authors on this study include researchers from Georgia Institute of Technology, Pukyong National University and Yonsei University College of Medicine in South Korea as well as WSU.