Evaluation of open-source robotic-assisted additive manufacturing equipment for additively manufactured three-dimensional curved structure

Additive manufacturing (AM) technology is leading the revolution in the industrial sector. The robotic additive manufacturing equipment, with its high degree of flexibility and multi-directional manufacturing path capability, can break through the limitations of traditional equipment to produce more complex parts. In this paper, an open-source low-cost robotic-assisted AM framework is proposed. Through forward and reverse kinematic calculation, the position and attitude of the end actuator of the manipulator are precisely controlled. The six-axis robotic arm-based AM system was systematically designed and validated via targeted printing tasks. The results demonstrated that the open-source system performed better than the conventional three-axis system. The proposed robotic arm achieved a deposition speed of 128 ± 5 mm/s (p < 0.01 compared to 65 ± 8 mm/s, n = 10). Through employing a six-degree-of-freedom (6-DoF) motion path algorithm, it achieved efficient 6-DoF support-free printing and highly reduced printing time by 43.7%. It is highlighted that robotic-assisted AM is a transformative example of intelligent manufacturing, which enables high-speed, high-accuracy manufacturing processes of complex geometries.