Metallic glass gears up for 'cobots,' coatings, and more

Where are the robot assistants we were promised?

For each the abstraction that robots person occupied successful the fashionable imaginativeness for the past 100 years—and though the fig of real-world automatons has been increasing for decades—most people's interactions with them stay constricted to a hands-free vacuum oregon a child's astute toy.

There are 2 main reasons for this, according to Glenn Garrett, main exertion serviceman of a NASA spinoff company, Amorphology Inc.: outgo and safety. Most automated machinery is inactive lone affordable to ample manufacturers that tin marque large investments and expect semipermanent savings. And portion robots instrumentality up much and much of the mill floor, they're mostly segregated from their quality colleagues owed to information concerns—largely oblivious to their surroundings, they're beardown and dangerously clumsy.

In the mid-1990s, 2 Northwestern University professors patented an alternate conception nether a caller term: cobots. Collaborative robots, designed to cooperate with humans, would beryllium smaller, smarter, much responsive, and much aware, with tighter self-control and amended manners each around. In the years since, leaps successful artificial quality and sensors person made these "friendlier" robots a world but outgo inactive prevents their wide adoption.

"That's wherever the robotics manufacture is going," Garrett said, noting that a fistful of cobots are already making lattes and sandwiches, for example. "But if it costs $40,000, it's retired of scope for non-industrial applications."

The biggest outgo drivers, however, aren't ever the precocious bundle and sensors. Instead, helium said, it often comes down to immoderate of the astir rudimentary instrumentality components: gears. "High-precision gears are astatine slightest fractional the outgo of robotic arms."

Now, Pasadena, California-based Amorphology hopes to driblet the terms of cobots with advances primitively made for robots that were ne'er intended for quality interaction—NASA's planetary rovers.

Rovers Adapt to Martian Climate

Gears connected NASA's rovers, similar astir gears connected Earth, are made of steel, which is some beardown and deterioration resistant. But alloy gears request liquid lubrication, and oils don't enactment good successful frigid environments similar the lunar oregon Martian surface. So, NASA's Curiosity rover, for example, spends astir 3 hours warming up lubricants each clip it prepares to commencement rolling, utilizing up astir a 4th of the discretionary vigor that could different beryllium utilized for science, said Doug Hofmann, main idiosyncratic of the Materials Development and Manufacturing Technology radical astatine NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory successful Southern California. "So that's truly frustrating. It would beryllium large if those gears could conscionable crook connected and drive."

With an oculus toward solving this and different materials-related issues, successful 2010, JPL hired Hofmann, past a probe idiosyncratic astatine Caltech with a inheritance successful materials subject and engineering. NASA funded a caller metallurgy installation astatine JPL to research alternatives for gears and make caller metallic alloys.

From his days astatine Caltech, which manages JPL, Hofmann was acquainted with an emerging people of specially engineered materials called bulk metallic glass, besides known arsenic amorphous metals. These are metallic alloys that tin beryllium rapidly cooled from liquid to coagulated earlier their atoms signifier the crystalline lattice operation that is communal to each different metals. Instead, the atoms are randomly arranged similar those of glass, giving the materials properties of some solid and metal.

Depending connected their constituent elements—often including zirconium, titanium, and copper—they tin beryllium precise strong, and due to the fact that they aren't crystalline, they're elastic. Most compositions besides signifier a hard, creaseless ceramic oxide surface, Hofmann explained, noting that these properties unneurotic spend gears made of immoderate amorphous metals a agelong beingness with nary lubrication. "That's, of course, truly important to NASA, due to the fact that you tin tally your gearboxes without lubricating them."

Currently, the Cold Operable Lunar Deployable Arm (COLDArm), a collaborative effort betwixt JPL and the institution Motiv Space Systems for lunar missions, is expected to usage bulk metallic solid gears to run successful temperatures down to minus 290 degrees Fahrenheit without the request for a heating source.

A strain question cogwheel converts the fast, low-torque rotation of an motor into slow, precise, forceful motion. As the oblong question generator astatine the halfway spins, it deforms the flexspline astir it, shown successful red, which engages with the teeth of a fixed outer spline. The enactment causes the flexspline to rotate successful the other absorption of the question generator, moving lone 2 teeth for each crook of the motor. Credit: Jahobr, CC0 1.0

Casting for Affordable Robot Parts

But amorphous metals person different spot that makes them charismatic for gears connected Earth: "These alloys are designed to person debased melting temperatures, due to the fact that to marque a metallic glass, you person to chill the alloy faster than it tin crystallize," Hofmann said. This debased melting point, unneurotic with their autochthonal spot and the information that their measurement hardly changes upon solidifying, makes bulk metallic glasses casual to usage successful injection molding, which tin dramatically trim the outgo of making parts similar gears.

Most high-strength metals person precocious melting points. They can't beryllium formed with molds because, successful molten form, they would simply melt the mold. And alloy needs to beryllium rolled oregon forged to fortify it, which besides precludes molding. So, gears typically commencement arsenic alloy billets that are "machined"—cut, ground, milled, and drilled—into their last shape. Tiny gears, similar those for tiny cobots, are particularly challenging—and costly.

The astir difficult, costly gear constituent to instrumentality from a alloy artifact is 1 of the astir communal successful robotic arms: the flexspline, an highly thin-walled, flexible cupful with a toothed rim. This is the centerpiece of what's known arsenic a strain question cogwheel assembly, which offers amended precision, higher torque, and little backlash than different cogwheel sets. This eliminates positioning errors that would beryllium compounded successful a robotic limb with aggregate joints.

"It's a precise strange-looking cogwheel if you've ne'er seen it, but it's the bosom and psyche of a precision robot," said Hofmann.

This is wherever molding with amorphous metals promises the top savings: it costs astir fractional arsenic overmuch arsenic machining strain question gears from steel, Hofmann said.

Molding small, high-performance planetary and strain question gears became the cardinal concern program for Amorphology, which Hofmann cofounded successful 2014. Through Caltech, the institution licensed respective patents for exertion helium had developed for NASA.

Meanwhile, helium and colleagues continued pursuing caller materials for spacecraft astatine some the metallurgy laboratory and JPL's Additive Manufacturing Center. A fig of patents and technologies led Hofmann to recovered a 2nd spinoff institution focused connected utilizing amorphous metals successful coatings, 3D printing, and different non-gear-related applications. Both were backed by the aforesaid task superior group, and successful 2020 they merged nether the Amorphology name, combining astir 30 patents and patent applications for the exertion from JPL.

A Market Beyond Mars

That year, the merged institution finished its determination into a new, 13,000-square-foot manufacturing installation wherever astir 15 radical present work, mostly making and investigating prototype pieces for tiny cogwheel assemblies for respective customers. Amorphology's archetypal and largest lawsuit is 1 of the world's foremost manufacturers of strain question gears.

At slightest 1 different lawsuit has hired the institution to overgarment user electronics parts with metallic glass, making them much durable, indicating different marketplace with contiguous potential, said Stephen Ceplenski, main maturation serviceman astatine Amorphology.

Hofmann noted that gears that tin run without lubrication are besides of involvement to businesses similar nutrient manufacturing, wherever lubricants tin go contaminants.

Meanwhile, galore of the company's different patents for JPL technology—all licensed from Caltech—are astir apt inactive years distant from commercialization, though they are successful fields that are gaining dense interest. Among these are caller alloys and precocious metallic 3D printing technologies, from thermal spray additive manufacturing to ultrasonic welding.

Amorphology is not the archetypal institution to commercialize innovations successful bulk metallic glass from JPL and Caltech, but Garrett noted that creating a startup based connected caller materials is notoriously difficult. If lubrication-free gears oregon low-cost flexsplines find a semipermanent market, "that would beryllium a immense measurement towards sustained commercialized occurrence for bulk metallic glass," helium said. "The probe for the Mars rovers would beryllium straight liable for that."

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