New Printing Robot for High-Resolution Pictures on Three-Dimensional Wide Surfaces

A novel five-axes robot for industrial large printing applications is presented in this paper. The robot was developed in the robotics team from PRIME institute(1) and an international patent was deposited for this invention in 2006. It concerns large-format 3-D printing on a fixed surface, like trailer tarpaulin for example. The robot is composed of an inkjet printing block and a device to dry the ink sprayed onto the surface. Kinematics of the mechanical device with 5 DOF was studied to position and orientate the printheads onto the surface to be printed. The structure of the robot is simple with high-speed capability and printing resolution. The working principle and mechanical structure are described, and the geometrical model and surface following control of the robot are also discussed. Finally, printing results in a practical situation illustrate the efficiency of the proposed 3-D printing robot, and an analysis of how the task is carried out is provided.