Research On The Path Planning Of Fused Deposition Modeling

Rapid Prototyping Technology(also known as 3D Printing Technology or Additive Manufacturing Technology, etc.) has made a wide range of applications in the automotive, aerospace, medical and military fields with their own advantages of manufacturing arbitrarily complex shaped parts. There are already dozens of different molding processes. There are many commercialized technology, such as Stereo Lithography Apparatus(SL), Fused Deposition Modeling(FDM), Laser Engineering Net Shaping(LENS), Selective Laser Sintering(SLS) and Laminated Object Manufacturing(LOM) and so on. FDM with it’s low cost and small size quickly become a hot topic, but molding quality should be improved. The path planning was researched to improve the quality of FDM.Through the study of model data and tiered process, the process of slicing was completed. By studying the generation algorithm of the scanning path, the reciprocating linear scanning, the bias scanning, packet scanning, adaptive scanning and stratification variable direct scanning were completed.The building process was simulated by FEA method. The effects of different scanning path and process parameters on molding precision were researched. By simulating along the short side and the long side, and the rule of scanning along the long side has better precision was attained, the scanning direction was optimized. Through simulation of orthogonal scanning, the simulation results showed that the molding accuracy of orthogonal scanning is higher than scanning along the short side, poorer than scanning along the long side. Different length packet scanning were simulated, the results show that parts will be divided into several short side scanning and can improve molding precision. Molding process for different scanning speeds were simulated, the simulation results showed that the faster the scanning speed, the higher molding accuracy was. Molding process for different scanning widths were simulated, the results showed that the wider the scanning width, the higher the molding accuracy was.