DEVELOPMENT OF A PNEUMATIC, ARTIFICIAL-MUSCLE- BASED PRESS FOR PUNCHING THIN METAL SHEETS

The present study examines the nonlinear behavior of pneumatic, artificial muscles and investigates their availability for produc-ing pressing forces over the experimentally determined tensile forces. It covers the design and manufacturing studies of a test setup and a pneumatic, artificial-muscle-based press to achieve this goal. The press design consists of a single pneumatic artifi-cial muscle to provide the main pressing force and another two to bring the press back to the neutral position. The proposed ap-proach is considered sufficient for thin sheet-metal punching molds and fills a gap in the spectrum of pressing technologies. A sufficient level of pressing force for thin sheet-metal punching is found to be achievable using a single 40-mm-diameter, pneu-matic, artificial muscle. The results show that the press can produce (9.1, 23.1 and 36.9) kN pressing forces at (200, 400 and 600) kPa air pressures, respectively.