Optomec’s versatile Aerosol Jet Quad Print Engine is set to enable the printing of artificial muscles.
Purchased by the Factory Automation and Production Systems Institute at Friedrich-Alexander-Universitat Erlangen-Nurnberg, the print engine will be used to develop bio-electronic actuators known as Dielectric Elastomer Actuators.
The DEAs can be used in robots, games and medical applications and are created from ultra thin layers of elastomer film, silicon and electrodes.
Optomec’s Aerosol Jet technology is an ideal solution for DEAs due to its capability of printing a variety of materials at dimensions below 10 microns. The technology is a non-contact direct write printing process and can deposit a range of commercial and custom electronic materials including insulator, conductor and biologic formulations into virtually any substrate.
“We’re pleased to see the unique capabilities of Aerosol Jet Technology being applied to the exciting area of DEAs and helping develop production grade manufacturing environments for their implementation,” said Ken Vartanian, VP of Marketing at Optomec. “The research being done at FAPS holds great potential for many life changing innovations and we’re proud to be contributing to accelerate the commercial viability of this work.”
The Aerosol Jet Print Engine is the primary machine in Optomec’s rapidly growing fleet of production grade manufacturing systems. It delivers an ‘open systems’ architecture which means it can be integrated with custom or standard commercial automation platforms, ideal for the FAPS application.
Optomec will feature at this year’s TCT Show at the NEC Birmingham, UK. The show takes place over three days from September 30th and will feature almost 200 exhibitors to an audience of up to 10,000 visitors.
