3D Digital Manufacturing via Synchronous 5-Axes Printing for Strengthening Printing Parts

The objective of this paper is to present the development of 3D digital manufacturing through synchronous 5-axes printing for greatly enhancing the strength of the printed parts. In traditional fused deposition manufacturing (FDM), which is one of the digital manufacturing technologies, the melted material is required to be extruded from the nozzle on the workspace platform with a fixed direction. The strength is restricted in the direction of perpendicular to the layers since the printing way is layer by layer. The poor adhesion between the layers becomes a weakness to resist external force, especially when the force exerted from different directions. In this paper, algorithms for synchronous five axes printing based on the surface printing trajectory has been proposed to overcome the lack of strength issue. A five axes synchronous 3D printing machine developed in our NTU Intelligent Robotics and Automation Lab enhances the strength of the printed parts by adding additional materials to the surface of the parts. Five axes printing can achieve the goal of printing in different orientations so that the strength of the printed parts is greatly enhanced in comparison with the printing in a fixed direction only. The five axes synchronous 3D printing has been successfully demonstrated in physical printing. The strength analysis of printed parts is also performed under the three-point bending test and the tensile test. It shows that the strength of the five axes printed sample is increased by nearly three times in the bending test and nearly two times stronger in the tensile test.