About this Abstract |
Meeting |
2025 Annual International Solid Freeform Fabrication Symposium (SFF Symp 2025)
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Symposium
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2025 Annual International Solid Freeform Fabrication Symposium (SFF Symp 2025)
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Presentation Title |
Route Your Ooze (RYO) Drive: A New Way to Route Flexible Filament in 3D Printing with Motion-Decoupled Rolling Joints |
Author(s) |
Ryo Takei, Brett Emery, Albert Lin, Jacob Miske, Jeffrey Lipton, John Peter Whitney |
On-Site Speaker (Planned) |
Ryo Takei |
Abstract Scope |
Flexible filaments such as Thermoplastic Polyurethane (TPU) are useful in a variety of 3D printing applications but are challenging to print due to their low stiffness and tendency to buckle, requiring constrained filament paths to ensure reliable feeding. To mitigate possible print defects, TPU filament is typically dried during printing using a filament dryer placed wherever necessary to accommodate the shortest and straightest possible filament path to the extruder. Traditional Bowden tubes, while simple and widely used, introduce high and nonlinear friction, particularly problematic when routing flexible materials over long distances or tight bends. This paper introduces the Route Your Ooze (RYO) drive, a modular, low-friction filament routing system adapted from rolling joint cable transmissions used in robotics. The RYO drive uses bearing-supported pulley joints to maintain constant filament path length and tension regardless of extruder position, offering a friction-insensitive alternative to Bowden tubes. The RYO drive exhibits significantly lower friction compared to Bowden tubes and is effectively length independent. The study also compared the RYO drive with Bowden tubes (specifically Prusa PTFE tubes and Capricorn PTFE tubes) on Original Prusa XL and found no improvements on material extrusion across its large print bed and no improvements on volumetric flow rate, likely due to the printer’s already optimized path routing and customized hardware to print flexible materials. However, under tortuous filament pathway conditions — such as 2-meter paths with high total bend angles — PTFE tubes caused severe under-extrusion or print failure, while the RYO drive maintained consistent performance. These results validate the RYO drive’s potential for flexible filament routing in constrained or custom configurations, where traditional Bowden setups fall short. |
Proceedings Inclusion? |
Planned: Post-meeting proceedings |