Biodegradable Mechatronic Products by Additive Manufacturing

Abstract

Mechatronic products are necessary for our life and industrial factories. Recently, most mechatronic products have self-monitoring function, which is based on the sensor data. This function is useful not only for efficient maintenance but also efficient product recovery. However, additional sensing and communication devices lead to increase of environmental costs by themselves. Therefore, eco-design of mechatronic products including these devices is expected. In this paper, the use of additive manufacturing (AM) with biodegradable materials is proposed. First, the realization type of the product is defined as the proposition of this paper. Then, characteristics of AM and biodegradable materials for contributing to reduce environmental costs are analyzed. Additive manufacturing (AM), which is usually called as 3D printing, has naturally advantage in eco-design. Biodegradable material is also known to reduce energy for product disposal processes. However, it is shown that the combinational use of them promotes the effectiveness. Next, the comparison between the conventional product and the present product of the production and disposal processes is discussed by using an electronic print board. The result shows that the production process becomes remarkably simple and the recovery process becomes efficient. Finally, a realization example is introduced. An RFID antenna module fabricated with PLA and an original biodegradable electric conductive gel is shown. This module is confirmed to work certainly by connecting with an IC chip as a mass-production module. The realization of the proposed product is discussed.