Negshell Casting: Making complex soft robots using Clear resin cores

Hi!

We recently published a paper using the Form 2/3 to make soft robots, not using Elastic/Flexible resin, but casting & molding silicone rubber. Typically, eggshell casting is used to cast complex external geometries (Formlabs has a great article about that), but for soft robots, we need those complex geometries internal to create air chambers that expand or for creating sensing channels. So, we exploited how thin-walled Clear resin parts can be brittle to create internal voids for soft robots (that would normally need to be made out of wax and later dissolved), these parts are then broken down into small pieces after casting. We also use the same principle to strengthen otherwise flippity-floppity-wibbly-wobby soft robots by using a bit less thinner parts.

We also have a website that explains everything in detail, complete with example Preform files and models!
https://negshell.github.io/

Finally, the paper is available for free here: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/metrics?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0234354

Thanks for reading and happy printing!

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super nice!! thanks for sharing !!

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