A robotic cell for performing sheet lamination-based additive manufacturing

Many applications require structures composed of layers of heterogeneous materials and prefabricated components embedded between the layers. The existing additive manufacturing process based on layered object manufacturing is not able to handle multiple layer materials and cannot embed prefabricated components. Moreover, the existing process imposes restrictions on the material options. This significantly limits the type of heterogeneous structures that can be manufactured using traditional additive manufacturing. This paper presents an extension of sheet lamination object manufacturing process by using a robotic cell to perform the sheet manipulation and handling. It makes the following three advances: (1) enabling the use of multi-material layers and inclusion of prefabricated components between the layers, (2) developing an algorithmic foundation to facilitate automated generation of robot instructions, and (3) identifying the relevant process constraints related to speed, accuracy, and strength. We demonstrate the system capabilities by using three case studies.