55 - How 3D Printing Aids Automation, and How Additive Will Reach Farther With Robots

AM Radio

Additive manufacturing and robots are parallel technologies, both digitally enabled tools for manufacturing that are advancing in adoption. But they also enable each other. 3D printing can provide the grippers, end effectors and other specialized tooling that robots require to serve production. And robots are driving AM forward as well. Collaborative robots or cobots are being used to tend 3D printer farms, sometimes mounted on autonomous guided vehicles (AGVs) for a fully mobile, as well as automated, solution. And robots are opening opportunities for larger and more complex part production, by providing the motion for a growing number of large format additive manufacturing (LFAM) systems. In this episode of AM Radio, Gardner Business Media Robots & Autonomy editor Julia Hider joins Stephanie Hendrixson and Pete Zelinski to discuss how AM and robots interact, and specific examples of this interaction.

Find photos, video, related links and the transcript for this episode on AdditiveManufacturing.Media.

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Mentioned in this episode:

• Julia's Robots and Autonomy reporting
• How Savage Automation produces 3D printed end effectors for injection molders
• Rapid Robotics and Robots as a Service (RaaS)
• Large, 3D printed grippers used by BMW to handle car parts
• Pete's Formnext robot gripper encounter (first photo)
• Julia’s story on the Advanced Robotics for Manufacturing (ARM) Institute, home of the 3D printed LEGO gripper
• More advanced and additive manufacturing work happening in Pittsburgh
• How AM enables cobot automation for Thyssenkrup Bilstein
• Examples of 3D printed cobot tooling provided by EMI Corporation, as seen in the Universal Robots booth at NPE
• Evco Plastics' Markforged printer cell, tended by a cobot informed by email
• Soft grippers and their potential usefulness for handling 3D printed parts
• The Mosaic Array 3D printer cell, enclosing four individual printers tended by one gantry system
• Javier, Ford Motor Company's AGV-mounted cobot for tending polymer printers
• Branch Robotics' mobile robot for tending a farm of potentially dissimilar 3D printers
• How Alquist 3D supports both on-site construction and in-house serial production with robot 3D printing
• A large casting replacement produced by Lincoln Electric using robot-based wire arc additive manufacturing (WAAM)
• What Additive Engineering Solutions (AES) is learning in the transition from gantry- to robot-based LFAM
• How Double D plans to build next-generation horse trailers with robot-enabled 3D printing