A Mobile 3 D Printer for Cooperative 3 D Printing

Cooperative 3D printing is an emerging technology that aims to provide scalability to 3D printing by enabling thousands of printhead-carrying mobile robots to cooperate on a single printing job and to integrate pre-manufactured components during the 3D printing process. At the core of the cooperative 3D printing platform is a mobile robot that can carry different printhead or a gripper. In this paper, we present a mobile 3D printer with a filament extrusion printhead that can be controlled over the Internet. First, we designed a compact mobile 3D printer with an extrusion printhead and four omnidirectional wheels. A wireless communication interface is also developed to send commands to and receive information from the mobile 3D printer. Successful prints have been demonstrated with two developed mobile 3D printers printing cooperatively, which shows the promise of cooperative 3D printing.