Design and industrial implementation of a multi-functional part produced by powder bed fusion

The use of robot end-effectors programmed to perform handling tasks in industrial environments has expanded in several sectors as a consequence of the rapid digital transformation seen in recent years. With such growing demands, additive manufacturing is evolving in the robotics field with more efficient, innovative, and customer-specific solutions owing to its design flexibility. Thus, this work presents a robot end-effector developed and produced by powder bed fusion (PBF) to execute palletizing operations in the automotive electronics industry, where electrostatic discharge interference is a critical concern. To guarantee the functionality of the developed robot end-effector under real conditions of implementation, prototypes of polyamide 12 (PA12) and PA12 incorporating graphene nanoplatelets were fabricated and characterized. This included the assessment of the mass, electrical surface resistance, and mechanical properties under tensile and compressive loads using biaxial strain gauges coupled to the prototypes for local strain monitoring. The experimental data were then used to define multilinear isotropic hardening models needed to numerically characterize the robotic system. At last, the final product was validated in an industrial environment at Bosch Car Multimedia S.A. Through the applied methodology, valuable insights in guiding process parameters optimization and materials selection for functional PBF parts depending on the technical requirements demanded by industrials are provided. FCT - Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia(2020.04520) / Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) through the PhD scholarship 2020.04520.BD. European Regional Development Fund through the Operational Competitiveness and Internationalization Programme (COMPETE 2020) [Project No. 47108 “SIFA”; Funding Reference: POCI-01-0247-FEDER-047108