Wood Pressing Robotic End-Effector

The project consists of the design of a Robotic End Effector device, which taking advantage of the possibilities Arduino and Kuka Robot gives us, an end effector that is  able to bend a panel of wood and shape it based on an already existing curved surface. This would allow the user to take a step back during most of the procedure and only intervene in the final phase of fixing the bent panel to the curved piece, so the end effector can keep doing the difficult part of the process over and over again.

In order to start with the design, the fixing plate of the Kuka robot was first taken into consideration, it was necessary to find some sort of “arm extension”, that could allow the robot to smoothly press the panel of wood against the curved surface and also permit the sensors to get precise readings on the pressure that was being applied during the process. For it, a rectangular, planar piece of wood was used as a base to mount all of the components on. The whole piece included different types of rails, motors, clippers, springs, belts, rollers, and of course the sensors connected to the arduino hardware. It was also necessary to 3D print some components to finish the design properly. 

For the next step of the procedure, the arduino code was generated. It was mostly based on a loop that received the data from the pressure sensors attached to the rollers and decided whether the pressure levels on the various points of the piece were too low, or high enough for the panel to actually bend without overly harming any of the components involved. This then allows the user to fix the panel to the curved surface so the robot can move on to the next point of the piece.

(This project is part of the Computational Design and Digital Fabrication course offered by ICD (Institute for Computational Design and Construction) in the ITECH M.Sc. Program at the University of Stuttgart).

Project by: Hussam Gomaa, Yara Karazi, Bruno Migliavacca Santos

01. 304 Stainless steel compression spring, outer diameter 12 mm, wire diameter 1.2 mm, outer diameter with 50 mm length. (x2)

02. Linear slide potentiometer, mixed fader B10K with two channels, 75 mm long. (x2)

03. 45 W Universal power supply, Input: 100-240V 50-60Hz; Output: 5V 6V 7.5V 9V 12V 13.5V 15V 3A Max, USB 5V 02. 4A. (x1)

04. Lino plastic roller, black color, ‎dimensions: 21.9 x 14.9 x 5.4 cm; 200 Grams. (x2)

05. Nema 17 stepper motor, holding torque of 45 Ncm, 1.5A, 12V, 4-Wire, size: 39mm (x2)

06. GT2, 6 mm wide rubber timing belt. (x2)

07. GT2, 5 mm toothed pulleys. (x2)

08. GT2, 6 mm toothed pulleys. (x2)

09. Aluminum rail, 46 mm wide, 95 cm long. (x1)

10. Alloyed steel linear guide, 35 cm long, 8 mm diameter. (x4)

11. Steel Ball bearing, 34 x 30 x 22 mm. (x4)

12. Aluminum bearing block, 42 x 32 x 14 mm.

13. 3D printed servo-controlled grippers, PLA white filament. (x2)

14. Micro Servo Motor (SG90). (x2)

15. 3D printed spring system, PLA white filament, PETG black filament. (x2)

16. Arduino Uno microcontroller. (x1)

17. Breadboard. (x1)

18. W5500 Ethernet Network Module Hardware, TCP/IP support, 8 ports, 3.3V or 5V. (x1)

19. L298N Stepper Motor Driver Control Board, dual H bridge module, 5V – 35V. (x2)

20. Plywood base for all the components, 20 x 95, 1.5 cm.(x1)

21. Plywood rear base for stepper motors, 34 x 20 x 2.3 cm.(x1)

22. Plywood frontal base for stepper motors, 14.5 x 9.5 x 1.0 cm. (x1)

23. Plywood base for toothed pulleys, 6.0 x 1.5 x 1.0 cm. (x2)

24. Plywood handle for roller, 46.5 x 4 x 1.5 cm.(x1)

25. Plywood “L” shaped arms for the grippers 59 x 1.7 x 1.0 cm. (x2)

Modeling Phase:

Our Arduino Sketch goes as follows!