Title: Design analysis of compliant 3D printed thermoplastic polyurethane micro-gripper with screw-gear actuation

Authors: N. Sahay; S. Chattopadhyay

Addresses: Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, Institute of Engineering and Management, Kolkata, Sector V, Saltlake City, Kolkata-700106, West Bengal, India ' Department of Electrical Engineering, National Institute of Technical Teachers' Training and Research, Kolkata, Block FC, Saltlake City, Kolkata-700106, West Bengal, India

Abstract: In this work the design and analysis of a compliant micro-gripper of thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU) material is presented. With the proposed design the prototype of the grippers will be developed by of 3D printing technology using TPU. The material is of light weight, low cost and very flexible in nature providing gripping with its deformation due to application of force at its actuation point. The gripper is designed and finite element analysis (FEA) has been done using Pro Release 5.0 software where stress and displacement are evaluated at every point of interest. Pressure has been applied in the range of 0.01 to 1.0 MPa to obtain input characteristics in terms of stress generation of the structure which is found to be linear in the range of interest. Output characteristics have been presented in the displacement curve with respect to the applied force. Actuating force has been calculated mathematically from the specified torque and other required parameters of the screw-gear actuation system.

Keywords: compliant mechanism; displacement analysis; micro-gripper; Pro Release 5.0; screw-gear; stress analysis; thermoplastic polyurethane.

DOI: 10.1504/IJCVR.2026.154147

International Journal of Computational Vision and Robotics, 2026 Vol.16 No.4, pp.497 - 506

Received: 26 May 2023
Accepted: 12 Feb 2024
Published online: 15 Jun 2026 *

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