Production of a Strain-Measuring Device with an Improved 3D Printer

A traditional strain measurement sensor needs to be electrified and is susceptible to electromagnetic interference. In order to solve the fluctuations in the analog electrical signal in a traditional strain gauge operation, a new strain measurement method is presented here. It uses a photographic technique to display the strain change by amplifying the change of the pointer displacement of the mechanism. A visual polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) lens with a focal length of 7.16 mm was added to a smartphone camera to generate a lens group acting as a microscope to capture images. It had an equivalent focal length of 5.74 mm. Acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS) and nylon amplifiers were used to test the influence of different materials on the sensor performance. The production of the amplifiers and PDMS lens is based on improved 3D printing technology. The data obtained were compared with the results from finite element analysis (FEA) to verify their validity. The sensitivity of the ABS amplifier was 36.03 ± 1.34 µε/µm, and the sensitivity of the nylon amplifier was 36.55 ± 0.53 µε/µm.