Re-engineering Infill Density System for 3D Printing

Abstract

With the advent of new technology in additive manufacturing, 3D printing has become one of prime importance in the field of manufacturing. One of the main advantages of 3D printing systems is that it allows us to control the density of the object being printed by controlling the parameters like the infill patterns and infill density. Infills directly affect the cost and time of manufacturing and properties of printed parts like strength, thermal conductivity, and density. The existing slicing software allows us to control the infill density and to choose the available infill patterns for printing an object. The selected infill density and pattern remain constant for the entire object and cannot be varied across specific areas of the object. In this paper, we analyze the various approaches of the re-engineered infill system based on topology optimization. In this paper, we propose a review of a smart infill system that produces 3D printed objects with variable density across the body of the object. The analysis of properties of such objects, time, and cost of printing is discussed and compared with the objects printed using existing systems.