Combining Additive Manufacturing with Advanced Composites for Highly Integrated Robotic Structures

The combination of additive manufacturing with advanced composites offers potentials in the development of highly integrated lightweight structures. This paper investigates a novel manufacturing process route where binder jetting is used to produce a water soluble sand core for hand layup of autoclave prepreg composites. The novel approach is applied to a hollow high performance robotic part demonstrating the following two design potentials: First, binder jetting of water soluble sand material is a suitable technology for the production of very complex composite parts at low tooling costs. Second, tailored load introduction elements made of selective laser melting enable lightweight designs. Weight savings of 54.3% compared to a state-of-the-art aluminum robotic part indicate that the approach is competitive for complex low volume parts.