Hi,
Has anyone build an extruder for your Kuka Robots? or has anyone here done 3d printing with kuka?

3D printer Kuka style
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happytriger2000 -
January 5, 2014 at 7:08 PM -
Thread is Resolved
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It's one of those things that's been on my to-do list for a long time... as soon as I can talk my boss into giving me a KR to play with for a while.
There was someone on the forum who was trying it a while back, but I never heard how it panned out. Bascially, they were going to use a standard RepRap extruder and just put the stepper motor under control of the KRC, with some sort of hand-coded utility to convert RepRap G-code into KRL. Probably should have worked, but unless they were using a small, "tight" KR, I suspect the accuracy would not have been very good. Most RepRap GCode involves lots of back-and-forth motions, especially during infill, which is the worst-case condition for backlash in any articulated robot arm. Still, for doing "coarse" prints, it should work quite well. With a RepRap-scale extruder, though, build times could get huge, if you're using anything like a significant fraction of the robot's work envelope. You might want to use multiple extruder heads -- a large one for volume work, and a small one for detailing. But I don't think any of the currently on-market software for 3D printers supports that kind of thing.
There was someone who turned an old IBM SCARA robot into a 3d printer: http://makezine.com/2012/08/17/3d-…th-a-scara-arm/
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Found some info. on Extruder for robots..
http://diy3dprinting.blogspot.co.uk/
http://i1220.photobucket.com/albums/dd459/h…le/Extruder.jpg -
Hm. Interesting. That looks like he's putting a regular injection-molding extruder onto the robot. This grinds&melts plastic pellets to extrude, where RepRap-style systems, unable to manage that amount of weight and power, just use plastic filament that's already close to the right size.
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This is the one:
Vimeo-dot-com-slash-17358934 -
That's really good topic, i would like to join - the last video is what the robot can use i think.
Anyone with idea how is the extruder working?
The other part is the software, but i suppose that it is possible to be used any 3d printing software with custom made postprocessor? -
More:
http://www.hizook.com/blog/2013/11/1…nd-building-scahttp://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robo…in-architecture
Brick laying is the one I really wanted to accomplish.
actually the extruder is quite simple, you need a heater to melt plastic, some gear mechanism to roll down the plastic strips, then a electronic board that controls the temperature PID. I have all the info. -
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Even better use 3d printing to to print the stock, and change tool to Milling to finish up the model....
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I've done it with metal and it was a lot fun - we had the laser set to Kw instead of W and vaporized some aluminum plate
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Hello Tyler,
Wow metal!!, then you can build a house with kuka adding metal as reinforced bar in concrete/cement.
Since you are a RM user, do you know how to read SRC in Robotmaster?, I'm trying to figure out how... -
Even better use 3d printing to to print the stock, and change tool to Milling to finish up the model....In fact, Northrup-Grumman has a machine that does this for large titanium structures (roughly 4m X 4m X 2m?). Uses two electron-beam welding guns with titanium wire feed to make large "rough machined" pieces for later fine-tuning using classical CNC machine. Saved a lot of money (and wasted titanium) over creating huge titanium "blanks" and just machining them down.
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Haven't try it, but will soon once I have an ATC wrist changer.
Either print the stock or mill the stock out of PU, then lost foam cast to metal and high speed mill to finish the model, my question here:
when mill out the PU stock then lost foam cast it to metal, you would need a reference point so that when the rough metal stock is setup on a CNC machine it needs to know where to start, correct? or is there another method of doing this? -
Either reference points, or a means of putting the foam and the rough metal piece in front of the robot in exactly the right location and orientation.
One approach that might work would be to add 3 or 4 reference points to the original mold, something that could be touched with a precise pointer mounted to the robot and be used to generate a Base frame that would be matched to the CAD/CAM model. This would, ideally, create a reference frame in the robot that matches the reference frame used by the software generating the machining path.
Or, add some "pegs" to the mold that would create protrusions in the rough metal that could be used to locate the casting exactly in front of the robot, by mating the protrusions to matching holes in the fixturing. This would still require aligning the robot to the fixturing very precisely, but it would be a one-time task rather than a task to be repeated for each casting.
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Either reference points, or a means of putting the foam and the rough metal piece in front of the robot in exactly the right location and orientation.Take my robot as an example, I have an external rotary table that holds the stock horizontally, in order to cast to metal I have un-load it and send it to a metal foundry then after casting I will either send it to a cnc machine shop of lod it back to the rotary table which I doubt it will hold the weight.
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http://youtu.be/bJJ50g4Pi2w
I quite like this teqnic... -
Hello Tyler,
Wow metal!!, then you can build a house with kuka adding metal as reinforced bar in concrete/cement.
Since you are a RM user, do you know how to read SRC in Robotmaster?, I'm trying to figure out how...reinforced bar is too easy to extrude - I don't think you'll see it printed anytime soon. Also, I'm no longer working for a Robotmaster distributor, I'm working with another software company..
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Hi,
Has anyone build an extruder for your Kuka Robots? or has anyone here done 3d printing with kuka?What type of extruder you are interested?
May be like this?
http://www.mataerial.com/ -