Can Ancient Metalworking Techniques Enhance Modern Robotic Arm Design?

[Jane Will]

I’m working on a lightweight robotic arm for pick-and-place tasks on a mobile platform and have been exploring various materials and fabrication methods. While advanced manufacturing techniques are common, I came across an article on ancient metalworking techniques that are surprisingly still in use today (https://www.theengineeringprojects....that-are-surprisingly-still-in-use-today.html), which got me thinking—do traditional methods like forging, casting, or riveting still offer practical advantages in modern engineering, especially when balancing strength, weight, and cost?

I’d love to hear your thoughts on whether these age-old techniques can benefit robotic arm design.

 

[gmax137]

Click bait, too many stupid ads.

 

[Rive]

For prototyping and DIY projects, they can be considered.
Also, there are related artistic or historical projects where these can be relevant in their original 'glory'.

But for a modern, industrial level thing, even if rivets to be chosen by the responsible engineer, they will be modern, engineered rivets.
Forging, casting - by now they all have their modern background.

 

[sophiecentaur]

One day they may use 3D printing as a substitute for heating and bashing but the printer will need to be hot and noisy. No- wait- they're like that already.

 

[jrmichler]

There are many ways to build a robotic arm. If that arm must be strong, stiff, and lightweight, it needs to be an engineered part. Designing and building the arm is a design optimization process where the design is done simultaneously with selecting the manufacturing process. Lightweight arms can be made from cast / forged / welded / machined / 3D printed steel / aluminum / titanium / magnesium / beryllium, fiber reinforced plastic, or even wood. BTW, wood has a strength to weight ratio close to that of steel, aluminum, and titanium. The design decision is a tradeoff between strength, stiffness, cost, manufacturing infrastructure, and number to be produced.

 

[Baluncore]

—do traditional methods like forging, casting, or riveting still offer practical advantages in modern engineering, especially when balancing strength, weight, and cost?

A design engineer needs a broad education, but design today is not so much ancient traditional processes, as it is style and structural analysis.

The traditional techniques have fallen out of use because they were weak, heavy, labour-intensive, and so expensive.

Cutting is wasteful, in energy, cutters, and material. Wire EDM is newer, but is also wasteful. Additive construction, with numerical control, is often more efficient.

Rivets, nuts and bolts, were heavy alternatives to welding. They apply point loads to structures, while adhesives can spread those loads, resulting in weight reductions. In ship building, the transition from rivets to welding took place during the 1940s. Then later in the aircraft industry, from sheet aluminium with rivets, to composite laminates with adhesives.

Forging is a process that gives internal structure to nonisotropic materials, but is inapplicable to fibre reinforced plastics.

Castings are convenient, but are always heavier than needed, so have been replaced by injection moulding or 3D printing.

Mass production, needs now to avoid traditional methods and materials, because traditions are, by definition, those that have fallen out of use.

 

[Rive]

The traditional techniques have fallen out of use because they were weak, heavy, labour-intensive, and so expensive.

They are not exactly 'fallen out', but transformed instead.
Yeah, maybe except (traditional) riveting. That's mostly gone, though there are some closely related techniques still in use.

So the starting point is a bit strange, IMHO. Casting and forging are widely used everywhere, it's just the (manual) hammer and the coal forge what's gone.