Optimisation of build time in fused deposition modelling

Abstract

In todays dynamic and competitive world Traditional manufacturing methods consume valuable time to develop products andrelease them into the market To speed up the production process Additive Manufacturing AM is introduced which is a smart manufacturing method where the materials are added instead of removing the undesirable ones to obtain products of the required shape But some Rapid Prototyping RP systems requiring Support Structure 2S like Fused Deposition Modelling FDM system raise the build time to a certain extent It results in an increase in the cost To avoid this numerous studies have been made in the field of process parameters optimisation Most of them primarily focused on surface quality Only a few researchers have considered build time as their primary objective In the present investigation build-time is reduced by i support volume minimisation and ii model volume minimization In order to minimise the 2S volume it is important to find out the number shape and placement of the support structures These factors make the computation too complex and tedious Hence in this investigation Support Structure Space 3S has been taken as the factor in determining the optimal build orientation Based on the assumption that 3S volume is directly proportional to 2S volume a mathematical model was established to calculate the 3S volume The model is verified by analytical calculations for a few simple shapes like the L shaped prism With the help of the mathematical model a newly developed 3S generic algorithm computes the 3S volume for different orientations of the given CAD model. newline