A novel fabrication set-up for the flexible production of silicone based EAP "artificial muscle" actuators

Abstract

This paper presents a novel fabrication set-up for producing silicone based EAP "artificial muscle" actuators which is relatively simple, flexible and well suited to low volume production. The required apparatus can be constructed quickly and at a low cost compared to competing techniques. The set-up can produce multi-layered configurations for applications that require greater actuator strain or stress. The set-up has also been demonstrated to produce individual polymer layers less than 100μm thick, which is beneficial as for a given input voltage actuator performance improves with decreasing layer thickness. A case study is presented to demonstrate the quality of the set-up and a potential bio-inspired application of the fabricated actuator is outlined. © 2010 WIT Press.