Multi Jet Fusion of Nylon-12: A Viable Method to 3D-print Concentric Tube Robots?

TL;DR

This paper investigates the potential of Multi Jet Fusion (MJF) technology to 3D-print Concentric Tube Robots using Nylon-12, aiming to improve upon previous SLS methods that yielded unsatisfactory results.

Contribution

First evaluation of MJF for fabricating Concentric Tube Robots with Nylon-12, demonstrating its viability as an alternative additive manufacturing method.

Findings

MJF successfully produces Nylon-12 CTRs with improved quality.

Compared to SLS, MJF offers better surface finish and mechanical properties.

The study confirms MJF as a promising technique for complex elastic polymer structures.

Abstract

In this paper, we present a study on the viability of fabricating Concentric Tube Robots using Multi Jet Fusion (MJF) of Nylon-12, a type of elastic polymer commonly used in additive manufacturing. We note that Nylon-12 was already evaluated for the purpose of building CTRs in prior work, but fabrication was performed with Selective Laser Sintering (SLS), which produced unsatisfactory results. Our study is the first study to evaluate the suitability of MJF to 3Dprint CTRs.