Non-planar multinozzle additive manufacturing of thermoset composite microscaffold networks

Abstract

Material extrusion-based non-planar additive manufacturing (AM) using 6-axis industrial robot arms shows great promise for three-dimensional (3D) printing of non-planar parts, despite its typical use of a single large coarse nozzle and high printing time. Here, a non-planar multinozzle AM method capable of achieving high resolution large-scale 3D printing with short printing time using 6-axis robots is reported. A custom Multinozzle Toolpath Generator (MTG), based on non-planar parameterized surface projection, is used to compute the orientation of a multinozzle extrusion array along the curvature of a 3D scanned substrate. The method is demonstrated by the fast 3D printing of large periodic structures (up to an area of ∼5.2 × 104 mm2 within 20 min) consisting of interconnected epoxy composite microscaffolds on a single curvature sinusoidal surface and a double curvature surface of an actual aircraft casing, with an error of 15 μm. The method could be used for AM in various fields such as tissue engineering, microfluidic channels, and porous acoustic coatings of aircraft components.