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Hi Guys,

I'm wondering if anyone has any experience with making an end effector for 3D printing/extruding on the end of a KUKA. I'm starting at 0 on this one and was hoping for a little leg up to get me started on the actual design and fabrication of the end effector and controlling the plastic flow?

I'm taking inspiration from the works of Fabio Gramazio & Mattias Kohler's work at ETH Zurich, 2013.

Regards,
Karl

[Johannes @ Robots in Architecture]

Hello Karl,

We recently implemented a simple solution where we have a global variable set whether the extruder is on or off (let's call it EXTRUDE). In the submit interpreter we check if EXTRUDE is true, and if so the speed is set according to the current speed of the robot's tooltip. That way we can compensate for the sometimes not perfect speed control of the robot in realtime. On the KUKA|prc side all you need is a Custom KRL component that says e.g. "EXTRUDE = TRUE" or "EXTRUDE = FALSE".

An even easier alternative would be to use an actual KUKA motor that you control with e.g. E1, but then you may need to expand your KRC cabinet, which is quite expensive (in addition to the motor).

Best,
Johannes

[mra4]

Hello Karl,

we tried a little with a standard extruder for desktop 3d-printers (bulldog extruder). We drive the extruder stepper with a nanotec stepper controller. This accepts a digital input for starting and stopping extruder an an analog output for speed.

Stefan