A 3D weaving infill pattern for fused filament fabrication

Yuan Yao,Lanlan He,Mohamed Aburaia,Maximilian Lackner,Cheng Ding

doi:10.1007/s00170-021-07694-z

Abstract

The fused filament fabrication process is the most used additive manufacturing process due to its simplicity and low operating costs. In this process, a thermoplastic filament is led through an extruder, melted, and applied to a building platform by the axial movements of an automated Cartesian system in such a way that a three-dimensional object is created layer by layer. Compared to other additive manufacturing technologies, the components produced have mechanical limitations and are often not suitable for functional applications. To reduce the anisotropy of mechanical strength in fused filament fabrication (FFF), this paper proposes a 3D weaving deposit path planning method that utilizes a 5-layer repetitive structure to achieve interlocking and embedding between neighbor slicing planes to improve the mechanical linkage within the layers. The developed algorithm extends the weaving path as an infill pattern to fill different structures and makes this process feasible on a standard three-axis 3D printer. Compared with 3D weaving printed parts by layer-to-layer deposit, the anisotropy of mechanical properties inside layers is significantly reduced to 10.21% and 0.98%.

Highlights

Additive manufacturing (AM) technology provides more flexible and rapid ways for the designing and manufacturing of modern industry
To reduce the anisotropy of mechanical strength in fused filament fabrication (FFF), this paper proposes a 3D weaving deposit path planning method that utilizes a 5-layer repetitive structure to achieve interlocking and embedding between neighbor slicing planes to improve the mechanical linkage within the layers
The fused filament fabrication (FFF), called Filament-based Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM), is the main forming method in AM, which extrudes molten material from the nozzle to the printing platform by heating, and lays a layer along a certain path step by step to build the entire structure of the model

Summary

Introduction

Additive manufacturing (AM) technology provides more flexible and rapid ways for the designing and manufacturing of modern industry. The fused filament fabrication (FFF), called Filament-based Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM), is the main forming method in AM, which extrudes molten material from the nozzle to the printing platform by heating, and lays a layer along a certain path step by step to build the entire structure of the model. This layer-by-layer method can simplify the hardware and software design of the manufacturing system [1], improve the stability of the manufacturing process, and reduce cost. The damage locations are unpredictable when fabricating parts with a complex shape, which makes it difficult to manufacture functional components directly by FFF[5,6,7]

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