Development of Crane for Additive Manufacturing

Sammanfattning: Increased popularity of additive manufacturing has pushed the method into new areas where it has not been used before, such as construction. Buildings are being 3D printed by various companies around the world, but the application of additive manufacturing in construction is still in its early stages. In order to conduct research in this field, the Department of Design Sciences at Lund University are in need of a crane to carry a cement extruder. A crane was designed using readily available parts from the workshop at IKDC, which included a vertical beam used as the base, a horizontal beam with rails and a robot which could traverse on the rails. The crane can rotate around its vertical axis and it can also move linearly in the vertical and horizontal directions. Some of the parts where modified in the design process to better fit the expectations needed to complete their task, but the design was restrained from too big changes in order to reduce manufacturing costs. Complete calculations were made on bearings, transmission unit and the overall structure, for dimensioning purpose and to ensure that failure will not occur during operation. Three types of methods were used for the structural analysis of the crane, an analytical method derived from Euler-Bernoulli beam theory and classic solid mechanics, a FEM method using CALFEM in MATLAB and a FEM simulation using ANSYS. A 3D model of the proposed design was created in CAD using SolidWorks.