Digital Fabrication of a 3D Object using Fixtureless Assembly

Digital fabrication is the kind of the manufacturing process expected to be the next industrial revolution due to its capability converting a digital model into a physical object with fully-automated operation of manufacturing. Although the assembly operation of mass-produced components gives relatively higher cost effective, it is still unprepared for the digital fabrication in practise, unlike the subtractive or additive operation. This research proposes the minimal-required robotic system and process enabling the digital fabrication using the assembly operation done at fixtureless location. The robotic system comprises a SCARA robot, a vacuum gripper, a ram extruder, a USB camera, and MATLAB® on a personal computer. The calibrations giving the required kinematic correlations, and the pose estimation capacitating the fixtureless location operation, are also described in this paper. The necessary process are product designing, product cell-decomposition, and product assembly. In result, the fully-automated assembly of a 3D object is successfully done at fixtureless location in about three minutes and haft which is short compared with using the subtractive or additive operation. This research gives promise of applying the digital fabrication using the assembly operation at fixtureless location for practical applications, such as building and repairing of furniture, constructive structure, and etc.