Moved here on 8/26/2010 for archiving purposes

Shopping List

• High Voltage Power Supply (ordered from Ebay - Trek 610B, $250)
• High Voltage cables (Allied Electronics?)
• Dielectric Materials
  • 3M VHB Film
  • Liquid Latex or Sikaflex for edge treatment (TAP Plastics?)
  • Britex Elastic Fabric (Britex in SF)
• Electrode Material
  • Carbon Black
  • RTV 118
  • RTV 159
  • Silicone Oils
  • Hexanes - from Bio Store
• Frames for stretching films - made from metal or plastic (SDM) or
• Mask maker? $700 from sign warehouse, less on ebay...
• HVLP gun - $30 from harbor freight

Fabrication Efforts

• Stretched film
  • SRI and AMI use this method
  • Dielectric is stretched acrylic (3M) or silicone (Nusil)
  • Electrode materials are carbon grease, graphite powder, etc.
    • Can be applied or airbrushed on
• Extruded tube
  • Rodrigo Alvarez's materials (provided for free)
  • Liquid electrolyte suggested
  • Very stretchy material (data coming soon...)

Power Supply

• Emco High Voltage model E50
• 0-15V converted to 0-5000V
• HighVoltageSafety

Progress

• 04/05/06
  • Mockup made of flexure frame with living hinges
    
    
• 04/08/06
  • New frames taken to AMI for masking and assembly.
    
    
  • Success! Video
• 04/12/06
  • Needs to be stiffer
  • Wider contact area (6-7 mm width) to adhere to film
  • Reduce stress concentrations on middle hinges.

Collaborators

• PolyPEDAL Lab
  • Robert Full
  • Tom Libby (formerly of AMI)
  • Michael Wehner (PhD student, ME)
  • John Thelen (undergrad)
• Artificial Muscle, Inc
  • Marcus Rosenthal
• SRI
  • Ron Pelrine
  • Roy Kornbluh
• UPenn
  • Daniel Koditschek
  • Jonathan Clark

Telecons

• Presentations
  • 9 Feb 2006 Tuned Structures from Full Lab
  • 16 Feb 2006 UMA Actuator and Constant Charge Stiffness from AMI
  • ? Variable Stiffness Equations from SRI
  • 14 March 2006 VariableHopper? from JonathanKarpick
  • 30 March 2006 Tunable Structures for EDUbot from Kod Lab
  • 27 April 2006 Actuator designs for Edubot from SRI

-- SanjayDastoor - 28 Apr 2006

Links and references

• Vanderborght, et al. Exploiting Natural Dynamics to Reduce Energy Consumption by Controlling the Compliance of Soft Actuators
• Science Magazine April 1, 2005 R. H. Baumann (NanoTech Institute and Department of Chemistry, University of Texas at Dallas) overview of artificial muscle technologies.
• March 17, 2006 Science -- 2 short articles
  • Artificial Muscle Begins to Breathe
  • Fuel-Powered Artificial Muscles

-- MarkCutkosky - 22 Mar 2006