{"id":404527,"date":"2022-11-21T14:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-11-21T13:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/innovationorigins.com\/?p=404527"},"modified":"2022-11-21T14:00:00","modified_gmt":"2022-11-21T13:00:00","slug":"it-only-takes-a-3d-printer-to-make-pneumatic-muscles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/en\/it-only-takes-a-3d-printer-to-make-pneumatic-muscles\/","title":{"rendered":"It only takes a 3D printer to make pneumatic muscles"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
Why we write about this topic:<\/summary>

Besides their applications in soft robotics, pneumatic muscles could also be integrated in human bodies. They could help impaired people recover lost body functionalities. <\/p><\/div><\/details>\n\n\n\n

Laugh, walk, or type an e-mail, your muscles help you perform all of these and countless other actions. The human body\u2019s tissue skillfulness has been hardly replicated artificially – because of its complexity. A cohort of researchers developed a way to design artificial muscles that resemble biological ones more accurately. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scientists from the Italian Insitute of Technology – IIT<\/a> – created 3D-printed spindle-like structures that can extend and contract at will. As a demonstration of their findings, they designed a pneumatic hand.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

GRACEs – GeometRy-based Actuators able to Contract and Elongate – can lift up to 1000 times their weight. Fundamentally – depending on the movement and on the use the muscle has to perform – makers can choose what and how many GRACEs they want to use via a mathematical model. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cState-of-art artificial muscles are good, the problem is assembling and customizing them. The device we created offers a high degree of flexibility since contraction and extension can be personalized. In addition to that, GRACEs also allow the muscle to stretch out,\u201d told Innovation Origins Corrado De Pascali. He\u2019s the lead author of the study<\/a> and a P.h.D. at the IIT.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Flexibility for complexity <\/h2>\n\n\n\n

A pneumatic artificial muscle – PAM, also called air muscle – uses air to mimic human movements. In a nutshell, they convert air energy into motion.  Standard air muscles – the first one invented by McKibben in the 1950s – consist of an inflatable inner tube inside a braided mesh, with clamps at each end. When the tube is inflated, it expands, pushing the mesh accordingly. This sleeve contracts in proportion to the degree its diameter are forced to expand, pulling the clamps. That\u2019s defined as the contractive force of the air muscle. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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