Week 9 Soft Robotics Inflatable and Casting

  • At the beginning of this session, we will see different techniques and applications for Soft Robotics and how to create them. Our teacher Adriana gives us instructions on what to pay attention to and shows us the different areas of application. (Mixtures, temperatures etc. which will be explained later)

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    First, we started with the Soft Robotics casting and were allowed to take shapes that we wanted to create.

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    Then we needed the materials we used to mix the liquid. Very important here was always that either component 30 A and 30 B were mixed or component 50 A and 50 B. The two components must not be mixed together. The difference is the flexibility of the two different liquids in the final product.

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    We choose 30 A and 30 B as liquid. If we wanted we could also add food coloring to color the liquid.

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    Befor we were able to pour the mixture into the mold, it was important to pay attention to the form with a spray to ensure that it does not stick later. Then we filled the molds and put the whole for 20 minutes at 65 degrees in the oven.

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    The Final result looks like this:

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    In the meantime we started with the inflatable Soft Robotics.

    Inflatable/Soft Robotics:

    For the Inflatables, also a kind of soft robotics we needed baking paper, vinyl fabric, hot iron, a silicone hose, and a piece of cable sheath. First, we considered a pattern of what we painted on the baking paper and cut out.

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    Then we took two equal layers of vinyl and put our pattern in between. Then the hot iron was used to weld the two layers together. Approximately Iron for 10-15 seconds. Important here above and below the vinyl had to be baking paper again so that the vinyl does not stick to the iron!

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    Then the tube had to be integrated to inflate.

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    For this we put the pipe into the vinyl and wrapped with the cable sheath. The excess vinyl cut off and incorporated with. Then it had to be welded together with a hot device.

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    The finished Soft Robotic inflatable looks like this:

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    Other examples of inflatable soft robotics created with the forms also connected to a hose to blow air.

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    Source last picture: https://adrianacabrera.github.io/SoftRobotics/