Multi-material 3D-Printing Soft Robot Functional Component

Abstract —3D printing has a wide range of applications and addresses many challenges inherited from conventional manufacturing techniques. This paper presents a dual-extrusion 3D printing platform capable of printing soft materials for soft robot functional components. Dow Corning-737 and Dragon Skin-0030 materials are used. Single-line experiment is used to determine the optimization parameters of extrusion pressure, printing speed, and layer thickness of the developed multi-material 3D printing platform. A soft valve consisting of two soft materials has been fabricated, and the printed soft valve is verified by a performance experiment. The results indicate that the developed 3D printing platform can fabricate soft robot functional components at high speed with high accuracy.