Zizzy is a personal robot designed to help those with limited mobility. Rather than being assisted by a nightmare creature, Zizzy would offer a more appealing and friendly option.
The coolest part about Zizzy is the 3D printable pneumatic artificial muscles. Project creator, [Michael Roybal] said it took over a year of development to arrive at the design.
The muscles are hollow bellows printed out of Ninjaflex with carefully calibrated settings. A lot of work must have gone into the design to make sure that they were printable. After printing the muscles are painted with a mixture of fabric glue and MEK solvent. If all is done correctly the bellows should be able to hold 20 PSI without any problem.
This results in a robot with very smooth and precise movement. It has none of the gear noise and can also give when it collides with a user, a feature typically found only in very expensive motor systems. If [Michael] can find a quiet compressor system the robot will be nearly silent.
What an excellent use of the custom printing capability of a 3D printer. This looks like it really has good uses and a purpose in modern designs.
Vibrating displacement pumps are always noisy because they only compress on slightly less than 50% of the cycle. Perhaps he could make a 3 phase compressor using exactly the same 3D printed parts along with some valves.
A peristaltic pump should be an excellent pressure source, and there’s several 3dprint designs available.
A rotary vane pump (use the exhaust of a vacuum pump) or a three piston reciprocating pump would provide smoother flow.
There’s also this https://www.google.com/search?q=disney+pneumatic+robot&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8 But I expect patented every which way.
Used vacuum pumps are extremely cheap (as in free, sitting in discarded dehumidfiers, air conditioners, refrigerators and freezers) and they make excellent almost silent air compressors.