(Left to Right) Prof. Kikuchi, Mr. Negishi and Mr. Tsuneki
Case Studies
Professor Kengo Ohnishi, Department of Electronic and Mechanical Engineering, Tokyo Denki University
Our research interest is the human-machine interface, specialized in the artificial hand and foot. We develop components of artificial hand and robot system used for rehabilitation training. We also evaluate the system we made.
We aim to contribute to people and society through the manufacturing integrated with our design skills, measurement technology and control technology.
MITS 3D printer support not only hard type resin but also soft one. It is useful especially to develop mechanical part connecting to human hand or body.
We have a long experience to use SLA 3D printer from other manufacturer in early days and we understand the pros and cons. It provide very smooth surface of model but handling liquid chemicals (resin) is something you don't like. MITS printer also uses resin but its handling is quite better because one print job requires just small amount of resin.
We also understand we need to learn know-how to avoide print failure and get models successfully. Manufactureing by 3D printer is different from CNC milling achine.
At this point we appriciate MITS advice and their services.
Graduate from left to right
Ms. Takaji, Mr. Kanda, Mr. Morita |
Artificial hand components connecting to arm |
Professor Masahiro Ando, Faculty of Engineering and Design, Shibaura Institute of Technology
My lab researches Net Shape Manufacturing* in the field of Engineering Design, and I would like my students to understand manufacturing with using latest machines as possible.
Now, we have several types of 3D Printers as the advanced machines in the lab. The reason why we purchased MITS M3DS-100 was that the rubber-like resin was interesting, and we thought we could keep the introduction costs and the running costs lower than inkjet 3D printers.
I was bit concerned that SLA machine might be difficult to use, but there was no problem, because graduate students could master the usage by cooperation of MITS, and they even became as they can instruct other students.
Now, my students use MITS M3DS-100 for their various researches. Many of students use the machine especially for graduation research, so it was working almost 100 % of time in the season for thesis finalization. One of my students got his job by presenting his research of printing with M3DS-100.
*The professor’s lab researches what kinds of processes are needed for a certain industrial materials to be fabricated as designed.
 Printed objects made by students |
 Shapes for physical test (picture: shapes for tensile strength test) |
 Management note book for M3DS-100 filled up with use history |
 Mixing experiment of rubber-like resin with acrylic resin |
Professor Kikuchi, Department of Advanced Robotics, Faculty of Advanced Engineering, Chiba Institute of Technology
My lab researches Automated Excavation Robots. We have used a Stereolithographic 3D Printer for fabricating robot parts before, but it was needed to be replaced from the point of view of the accuracy, the cost and the convenience.
We thought M3DS-100, which is a low priced SLA 3D printer with printing capability of rubber-like resin, was the best choice for our researches.
Generally, printing hard materials has a drawback that we need to consider the shapes of objects to be less deformable by stress, but M3DS series has an advantage, at this point, that the hardness of objects are changeable by mixing acrylic resin and rubber-like resin. This characteristic enables us to print the less deformable objects easily, and helps us to make robot parts. In addition, another characteristic is that users can color the resins, and this let us color those parts in different colors. Now we would like to try orange color, as MITS told us orange is preferable for fine-pitch printing. We think high elastic rubber-like resin is also useful for components which require high flexibility.
A robot component
Comparison of objects printed by Acrylic resin, Rubber-like resin and the mixture of both resins
