Proposta de um algoritmo de preenchimento EAIR na manufatura aditiva de metal

Abstract

The production process by Additive Manufacturing (AM), generally known as 3D printing, consists of the successive addition of layers of materials to produce a physical object from a computational model. The printing time on the AM technology can be reduced by increasing the thickness of each layer. However, the surface quality and the dimensional precision of the object are compromised this way. One alternative to lessen these effects would be to utilize layers with variable thickness according to the region being printed: a smaller thickness of the object’s exterior shell improves the surface quality, while the interior is filled with a larger layer, speeding up the printing time. This strategy is named as Accurate Exterior and Fast Interior (EAIR). The objective of this study is to implement and demonstrate the effectivity of the algorithm EAIR on the metal AM technology, known as Powder Bed Fusion (PBF). The algorithm was implemented in the software Rapid Prototyping Process Planning (RP3) of AM process planning, developed by the AM and tooling group (NUFER) of UTFPR. Additionally, tests were made on the 3D printer Ender-3 PRO of Material Extrusion (MEX), resulting on a reduction of 17.40% of the printing time and confirming the applicabilty of the algorithm on this technology. Although it was not possible to test the EAIR on a PBF printer in a timely matter to this study.