INNOVATION Sept-Oct 2019

Engineers at SFU are using additive manufacturing—otherwise known as 3-D printing—to break the boundaries that have historically kept robots and people apart, and to generate cost-effective, eco- friendly sensors that will improve human health. S ince 1977, C-3PO and R2-D2 have been arguably the most famous robots in the world. They are handy and endearing in equal measure (well, at least R2-D2 is), but would you ever actually want to shake their hands? The answer, according to Manpreet Kaur, EIT, is most definitely no: “they might crush you.” Rigid robots like C-3PO and R2-D2 and their real-life counterparts are very good at certain tasks. Industrial robots, for example, can complete dangerous or repetitious tasks with a speed, dependability, and precision that humans simply cannot match. But ask them to pick up an egg, says Kaur, who recently completed her PhD. in mechatronic systems engineering at Simon Fraser University, “and you will have a problem.” To see if she could solve that problem, Kaur worked with SFU Professor Woo Soo Kim, P. Eng., at his Additive Manufacturing Laboratory to test the use of 3-D printing in creating a robotic gripper that would be flexible and soft enough to handle delicate objects, including a human hand. Three-dimensional printing is an additive process that lays down ultra-thin layers of material to create pre-designed 3-D solid objects, using a digital file. It is the opposite of subtractive manufacturing—like milling, which cuts material away from a solid block—and can create an object using far less material in a shorter time. Any material that can be obtained as a powder can be used for 3-D printing: most commonly synthetic polymers, as in Kim’s lab, but also plastic, nylon, epoxy resins, wax, concrete, metals like silver and titanium, and even chocolate.

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