Toyoda Gosei Co., Ltd.

Yoji Kimura

Takashi Maeno

Hiromitsu Takeuchi

Takanori Nakai

Naoto Kuriyama

Yutaka Tsuchikawa

Hiroshi Yamaguchi

Kyohei Sato

Yukio Miura

According to a fabrication method, an extruded tubular member HA is formed, using an extrusion diewhich has an extrusion orificehaving an opening-side inner circumferential surfacehaving a circular section and a core-side diedisposed concentrically with the extrusion orifice, by extruding a tube material through an extrusion passagedefined between the opening-side inner circumferential surfaceand a core-side outer circumferential surfaceof the core-side die. As this occurs, a bent configuration is given to the extruded tubular member HA by changing contact areas where the tube material contacts the opening-side inner circumferential surfaceand the core-side outer circumferential surfacein a circumferential direction so as to set velocities at which the tube material is extruded to different values in the circumferential direction by controlling the position of the core diein rotating and axial directions relative to the extrusion orifice

Tubular member extrusion method and tubular member extrusion apparatus

An actuator includes a sheet having dielectric elastomer layers and conductive rubber layers provided on the front and back faces of each dielectric elastomer layer. The sheet is wrapped and rolled about a coil spring. The actuator expands the rolled sheet along an expansion direction of the coil spring by applying a voltage to the conductive rubber layers on the front and back faces of the dielectric elastomer layer, and contracts the rolled sheet along a contraction direction of the coil spring by stopping the application of the voltage. The actuator further includes a fiber layer located between the coil spring and the rolled sheet wrapped about the coil spring.

Actuator

An actuator manufacturing method includes alternately stacking a plurality of dielectric elastomer layers and a plurality of conductive rubber layers along the direction of thickness to form a sheet, and wrapping the sheet formed about a core to form a rolled sheet. When the sheet formed in the step of alternately stacking is wrapped about the core, the sheet is formed by the dielectric elastomer layers and the conductive rubber layers. Therefore, even if the dielectric elastomer layers in the sheet are made to be thin, the thickness of the entire sheet is prevented from being excessively thin.

Actuator manufacturing method

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Kiyosu, Japan

Yoji Kimura