Milan Sapieta

Humanoid and collaborative robots find their application in numerous sectors, such as automotive, electrical and mechanical engineering, not excluding the field of bioengineering. They replace repetitive and often monotonous human activity. As the trend nowadays is for continuous optimization of production processes, their advantage is easy relocation and operative application to new tasks, which allows the automation of practically all manual work. A common feature of manipulators is the control of the positioning of the actuators, primarily by adjusting the parameters of the drive units. Feedback is often implemented through various sensors that provide real-time information. However, most of the sensors in use do not provide information that would allow obtaining data on the history of the operating load in order to assess the further safe and reliable operation of the mechanical parts. This paper presents a low-cost torque sensor that was proposed by modifying the design of an existing part. The torque sensor was developed on the principle of strain gauge measurement. The results of strain–stress analysis obtained by numerical modelling were experimentally validated under static and dynamic loading. Practical application is mainly the development and long-term testing of prototypes of various types of manipulators and collaborative robots, where high accuracy and repeatability of positioning are essential.

The work aims at validating a methodology for 3D printing of gears with involute gearing and evaluating their mechanical properties using infrared camera. A general methodology for the setup of 3D printing of gears made of polymeric materials has been developed, which can be used in technical practice in order to replace parts produced by conventional methods. An experiment was prepared determination of the distribution of the 1st invariant of the stress tensor and phase shift using a modal exciter and an IR camera. The values of the 1st invariant of the stress invariant were found. For these measurements, the lock-in thermography method was used, using a modal exciter we force loaded a gear in which the response to the load was registered. The aim was to obtain the distribution of the strain or stress field on the loaded tooth. The experimental method used also belongs to the field of non-destructive testing (NDT), and with suitable experimental parameters we can also obtain information from the layers below the surface, as demonstrated in the phase images. The practical benefit is to provide a competitive advantage to companies that will exploit the properties of polymeric materials by knowing the mechanical properties of these materials.