Watch These Two Robots Cooperate On A 3D Print

Putting a 3D printer on a mobile robotic platform is one thing, but two robots co-cooperatively printing a large object together is even more impressive. AMBOTS posted the video on Twitter and we’ve embedded it below.

The robots sport omnidirectional wheels and SCARA format arms, and appear to interact with some kind of active tabletop to aid positioning. The AMBOTS website suggests that the same ideas could be used for other tasks such as pick and place style assembly work, and the video below of co-operative 3D printing is certainly a neat proof of concept.

As a side note: most omni wheels we see (such as the ones on these robots) are of the Mecanum design but there are other designs out there you may not have heard of, such as the Liddiard omnidirectional wheel.

16 thoughts on “Watch These Two Robots Cooperate On A 3D Print

  1. While the design is interesting the desire in clicking o this was to see both robots dynamically overlapping each other’s printing as they work. As it stands there’s no difference between this and two separate printers printing on different tables

    1. I believe I accidentally bumped the report comment on this. Please disregard.

      Well I agree with what you’re saying, I would also say that something like this has far more potential then standard dual printers on Separate Tables. I’ve been very interested and using a 3D printer to make molds to be used in carbon fiber layup 4 car parts, and this is the first printer that I’ve seen that I think could actually be utilized for something like that. There is so much these machines could be used for that I am happy for the article, even if they are non-overlapping during their printing.

      1. The video never shows the robot finish printing on one location, move to the other location and resume printing on one continous take. So it is higly possible that the concept is not actually implemented. Instead the robots are most likely manually relocated and readjusted between the frames. Still the good enough demonstration of the idea, and it is actually implementable, once the positioning accuracy and robots cooperation algorithms are solved.

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