Research Area

Process design

The main research in AMS Lab is the utilized process design of additive manufacturing. Among the utilized additive manufacturing systems, MMAM (Multi-Material Additive Manufacturing) process enables the concurrent stacking of heterogeneous materials with significantly different physical properties.

Process verification

The MMAM process which means the concurrent stacking of heterogeneous materials with significantly different physical properties involves the validation of fabrication between heterogeneous materials. This procedure serves to address unintended interference between additively manufactured heterogeneous materials and verify its adhesion strength.

Multifunctional Structure

MMAM process design enables the manufacturing of specialized complex functional devices with unique geometries achievable only through additive manufacturing. This constitutes an innovative production process projected to evolve into a burgeoning sector within the future manufacturing industry.

Advanced materials for Additive Fabrication

Research  in AMS Lab involves materials, manufacturing and mechanical engineering and design. Our focus areas include additive manufacturing, carbon nanomaterials and printed electronics. The work at AMS Lab. is multidisciplinary and involves a wide range of public and private collaborators. 

Manufacturing Design and processes

This theme focuses on the development, control, and experimental characterization of the additive manufacturing (AM) process through different AM processes such as Material Extrusion and Vat Photopolymerization. The aim is to optimize the fabrication parameters that lead to stable structures and enhanced mechanical and electrical properties.

Sensors development

Additive manufacturing facilitates the fabrication of 3-dimensional and complex shapes and structures. Thus, this axis focuses on the design, topology-optimization, performance, fabrication, testing and characterization of various sensors and components which have application in different fields ranging from medical field, robotic applications, wearable electronics and energy components.

Specialized Structure of Soft Actuator for Additive Manufacturing

Research is underway to develop soft actuators capable of handling fragile or soft objects. The conventional plastic molding method such as plastic injection molding faces challenges in producing customized soft actuators with diverse structures and functions.

However utilizing the additive manufacturing process allows the production of tailored soft actuators designed for various scenarios. Therefore the AMS Lab is conducting research on the structure and design of soft actuators specialized for additive manufacturing.

Performance Analysis

AMS Lab is actively involved in the development of soft actuators using additive manufacturing process and concurrently performance evaluation of the developed soft actuators are also being conducted. Performance evaluation of the soft actuators involves structural analysis of FEM(Finite Element Analysis) and utilization of a Machine Vision Program demonstrating a high reliability.

3D printing food is still in its infancy and has a long way to go before maturing commercially for professionals and consumers. However, it presents advantages such as personalizing meals especially in hospitals where restricted diets are more common, and easy reproducibility.

At AMS Lab, we took a head start at this exciting and challenging field where we fabricate and test our own food 3D printers for different types of food/ingredients. Generally, 3D food printers work much like a regular FFF(Fused Filament Fabrication) 3D printer in the sense that a viscous material is deposited onto a surface to create a final object: the raw material is fed into a syringe-like container and extruded as the nozzle moving according to the G-code to create the final desired 3-dimensional shape.

The rheological properties of edible materials are very sensitive to temperature change. Therefore, the temperature control of the extrusion system determines the precision of the 3D structure. Our aim is to increase the precision of structures made of food materials.

We are also developing systems that print more than one ingredient at a time, as a lot of dishes require more than one ingredient to be made. Dual-nozzles for food 3D printing were designed and applied to extrude two types of chocolate simultaneously.

Fish cake is an extremely popular food in South Korea that can be eaten as snacks, fried, or in soups. 

We have created a 3D printer that extrudes fish cake into any desired shape and size. The extrusion mechanism was designed and 3D printed according to the rheology of the material. At a raw state, the fish cake has a high viscosity so we are currently working on the control and optimization of the extrusion parameters for this type of ingredients as well as other food ingredients with similar rheological properties. Many variables have an effect on the quality of the final product such as the feed rate, the extrusion flow rate, and the stand-off distance between the laminated plates and nozzles. The quality of the structure should be preserved even after cooking (effect of the temperature on the 3-dimensional structures of high viscous food ingredients)