Adaptive Scaling of Components in the Fused Deposition Modeling Process

Currently, the fused deposition modeling (FDM) process is the most common additive manufacturing technology. The principle of the FDM process is the strand wise deposition of molten thermoplastic polymers, by feeding a filament trough a heated nozzle. Due to the strand and layer wise deposition the cooling of the manufactured component is not uniform. This leads to dimensional deviations which may cause the component to be unusable for the desired application. In this paper, a method is described which is based on the shrinkage compensation through the adaption of every single raster line in components manufactured with the FDM process. The shrinkage compensation is based on a model resulting from a DOE which considers the main influencing factors on the shrinkage behavior of raster lines in the FDM process. An in-house developed software analyzes the component and locally applies the shrinkage compensation with consideration of the boundary conditions, e.g., the position of the raster line in the component and the process parameters. Following, a validation using a simple geometry is conducted to show the effect of the presented adaptive scaling method.