On the Accuracy of the Infill Pattern’s Density in Additive Manufacturing

Abstract

This paper aims to study the accuracy of infill density in additive manufacturing processes especially metal additive manufacturing, considering the commonly used infill patterns in the industry. To achieve this goal, the commonly used 2D infill patterns and their input parameters are analyzed in detail and formulated. The amount of the layers’ infill density errors for various layers of a generic cubic volume are calculated and their deviations from the desired density values are represented for each infill pattern considering various parameter setups. The behavior of different infill patterns are compared to each other in terms of volumetric percentage error and the sources of the errors are investigated. The developed results can be used for proper selection of the infill patterns and to optimize the infill parameters for any layer-based additive manufacturing process. However, the effect of infill density accuracy is more significant in the metal additive manufacturing process, as metal parts are mostly built to serve as functional parts in the actual machines in the industry.