Robot Tape Manipulation for 3D Printing

Progress has been made to innovate printing materials and printing processes, in terms of building blocks, joining mechanisms, forms of control, and transformation methods. Typically, material forms for 3D printing include solid filaments, wires, liquid resins, powders, and sheets (1). These feedstocks are transformed into discrete building units (such as droplets and lines) and placed, deposited, or solidified at designated locations for layer-by-layer manufacturing. However, 3D printing of continuous and flexible tape (with the geometric form in between filaments and sheets) without breaking or transformation remains underexplored and challenging. In the composite manufacturing industry, carbon fiber prepreg tapes are widely used for placement, which is called automated tape placement/laying (ATP/ATL) (3). Such ATP systems generally use heat and pressure to consolidate the composite materials (4, 5). However, ATP/ATL systems are typically mounted with large-scale gantry systems or robotic arms (4, 6-8). Such approaches require high capital investment and complex heavy equipment, which is not easily accessible to general researchers and difficult to integrate with desktop-scale 3D printing technologies.