Abstract
There is a growing consensus that 3D printing technologies will be one of the next major technological revolutions. Over the past few years, many studies and researches have been carried out to improve and enhance the functions and performance of the 3D printers. In this paper, a modified Electromagnetism-like Mechanism (EM) algorithm is proposed to search for the optimum printing path of a 3D printer. The machine is set to fabricate the bracket of a photovoltaic solar energy harvesting panel. Instead of randomly setting the search step size, the improved EM systematically fine-tunes the steps to search for the best printing path. The performance of the enhanced EM is benchmarked with the conventional EM and Genetic Algorithm (GA). The results presented in this paper shows that the modified EM outperformed all other optimization techniques in terms of time taken, distance traveled and overall convergence process. We can thus conclude that the proposed modified EM performs well in optimizing the path planning sequence of a 3D printer.
Highlights
Rapid prototyping, or better known as the 3D printing technologies have progressively taken more attention in the manufacturing research around the world as the process has proven to be compatible with industrial manufacturing beyond Prototyping [1,2,3]
In order to show a better picture on the performance of the enhance Electromagnetism-like Mechanism (EM) compared to other optimization algorithms, a standard Genetic Algorithm (GA) is included in the benchmarking process
Like Mechanism algorithm has been developed for the optimization of the tool path of a 3D printing system
Summary
Better known as the 3D printing technologies have progressively taken more attention in the manufacturing research around the world as the process has proven to be compatible with industrial manufacturing beyond Prototyping [1,2,3]. This paper presents an enhanced Electromagnetism-Like Mechanism algorithm (EM) for the tool path optimization of a 3D printer. 2. ELECTROMAGNETISM-LIKE MECHANISM ALGORITHM This section presents the implementation procedure of a global optimization algorithm known as Electromagnetic-like Mechanism (EM) in minimizing the traveling path of the 3D printer tool. The EM imitates the attraction-repulsion mechanism of electromagnetic charges in the search for a global optimal solution. In the EM, all solutions are known as particles in the search space and the charge of each reflects the objective value of each. The calculation for the movement of a particle is as shown in equations (3), where λ represents the global particle movement step length It is a random value between 0 and 1, assumed to be uniformly distributed between the upper boundary (uk ) and the lower boundary (lk ). After a pre-fixed number of iterations, the best optimized tool path is fed back as the result
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callMore From: 3C Tecnología_Glosas de innovación aplicadas a la pyme
Disclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
