Feasible Solutions for Precise 3D Printing: The Simulation and Proposal

3D printing, a kind of emerging technology in additive manufacturing (AM), has been applied in many areas and aroused significant interests in academia and industry, for it promotes the development of democratizing design and manufacturing at lower overall costs. However, most 3D printers use open-loop stepper motor in their extrusion systems, which leads to unstable printing quality because it cannot change extrusion speed accordingly when manufacturing defects occur. Addressing this problem, this paper focuses on improving 3D printer feeding motor's ability of responding to inconstant filament diameter and provides a feasible solution including a conceptual design for feeding motor adaptive control as well as the possible printer configurations. In addition, by comparing series simulation results between the performance of stepper motor and servomotor operating within 3D printer feeding system, we conclude that servomotor can achieve and stabilize at a target value in a shorter time, thus inconstant extrusion caused by filament diameter variations and the slippage can be solved.