Compliant mechanisms are special kinds of articulated systems in which motion, force, or power are transferred or transformed through the deflection of flexible elements.Due to the reduced adoption and eventual elimination of traditional kinematic pairs, which rely on mating surfaces, compliant mechanisms are rather unaffected by friction, backlash and wear, involve negligible maintenance with no need of lubrication, and can be manufactured in a single piece to reduce the number of parts and components in system assembly.The potentialities of compliant mechanisms can be leveraged by three-dimensional (3D) printing, thanks to the ease of manufacturing of flexible elements with complex geometry and suitable tolerances at an affordable cost. This is particularly true for Fused Filament Fabrication (FFF) of Continuous Fiber Reinforced Thermoplastics (CFRT), which enables the tailoring of compliant mechanism response not only via shape and size optimization of the flexible elements, but also trough the selection of fiber volume-fraction and orientation within each deposited layer of material.In the literature, the use of compliant mechanisms is mostly suggested for systems requiring miniaturization, high precision, operation in special environments (vacuum, contamination-free, wet or dirty) and/or resistance to shocks.&nbsp;However, thanks to their inherent energy-storing capabilities, compliant mechanisms have also been used to realize systems with prescribed load-motion profiles. Examples are gravity balancing mechanisms and stiffness compensators for smart-material actuators. In these applications, however, only systems operating in quasi-static conditions have been considered.In this context, this paper investigates the potentialities of compliant mechanisms in dynamic applications; in particular, to reduce the motor torque requirements in systems with cyclic operation subjected to predominant inertial loads.After introducing the underlying concepts, a general design procedure is described that enables to synthesize the flexible elements of compliant mechanisms for given load and motion conditions.The effectiveness of such an approach is demonstrated in this work by reporting the design steps, the implementation procedure, and the assembly of a compliant Stephenson six-bar linkage realized in CFRT with FFF manufacturing process.

3d Printed Resonant Compliant Mechanism to Reduce Motor Torque Requirements of Machines With Cyclic Operation

Paper Proceedings: https://asmedigitalcollection.asme.org/SMASIS/SMASIS2021/volume/85499

ASME 2021 Smart Materials, Adaptive Structures and Intelligent Systems (SMASIS2021)

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