Prescriptive Modeling and Compensation of In-Plane Shape Deformation for 3-D Printed Freeform Products

Abstract

Although 3-D printing or additive manufacturing (AM) holds great promise as a direct manufacturing technology, the geometric accuracy of AM built products remains a critical issue, especially for freeform products with complex geometric shapes. Efforts have long been attempted to improve the accuracy of AM built freeform products. But there is a lack of generic and prescriptive methodology transparent to specific designs and AM processes. This paper fills the gap by establishing the methodology to predict and compensate the in-plane ( $x-y$ plane) geometric deformation of AM built freeform products based on a limited number of simple trial shapes. Built upon our previous predictive model and optimal compensation study for the cylinder and polyhedron shapes, this paper makes a breakthrough by directly controlling arbitrary freeform shape deformation from computer-aided design. Experimental investigation using stereolithography process successfully validates the proposed prescriptive modeling and compensation methodology. This paper provides the prospect of proactively improving printing accuracy of arbitrary products built by a variety of AM processes.