• Fashion & Textile Research Journal
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• v.24 no.3
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• pp.333-345
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• 2022

This study developed and evaluated the motion control of 3D printed fingers applied to smart gloves. Four motions were programmed by assembling the module using the Arduino program: cylindrical grasping, spherical grasping, tip-to-tip pinch gripping, and three-jaw pinch gripping. Cap and re-entrant (RE) strip types were designed to model the finger. Two types of modeling were printed using filaments of thermoplastic elastomer (TPE) and thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU). The prepared samples were evaluated using three types of pens for cylidrical grasping, three types of balls for spherical grasping, and two types of cards for tip-to-tip pinch gripping and three-jaw pinch gripping. The motion control of fingers was connected using five servo motors to the number of each control board. Cylindrical and spherical grasping were moved by controlling the fingers at 180° and 150°, respectively. Pinch gripping was controlled using a tip-to-tip pinch motion controlled by the thumb at 30° and index-middle at 0° besides a three-jaw pinch motion controlled by the thumb-index finger-middle at 30°, 0°, and 0°, respectively. As a result of the functional evaluation, the TPE of 3D-printed fingers was more flexible than those of TPU. RE strip type of 3D-printed fingers was more suitable for the motion control of fingers than the 3D-printed finger.