Tool change reduction for multicolor fused filament fabrication through interlayer tool clustering implemented in PrusaSlicer
ISSN: 1355-2546
Article publication date: 30 July 2024
Issue publication date: 27 August 2024
Abstract
Purpose
Presently in multicolor fused filament-based three-dimensional (3-D) printing, significant amounts of waste material are produced through nozzle priming and purging each time a change from one color to another occurs. G-code generating slicing software typically changes the material on each layer resulting in wipe towers with greater mass than the target object. The purpose of this study is to provide an alternative fabrication approach based on interlayer tool clustering (ITC) for the first time, which reduces the number of tool changes and is compatible with any commercial 3-D printer without the need for hardware modifications.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors have developed an open-source PrusaSlicer upgrade, compatible with Slic3r-based software, which uses the described algorithm to generate g-code toolpath and print experimental objects. The theoretical time, material and energy savings are calculated and validated to evaluate the proposed fabrication method qualitatively and quantitatively.
Findings
The experimental results show the novel ITC method can significantly increase the efficiency of multimaterial printing, with an average 1.7-fold reduction in material use, and an average 1.4-fold reduction in both time and 3-D printing energy use. In addition, this approach reduces the likelihood of technical failures in the manufacturing of the entire part by reducing the number of tool changes, or material transitions, on average by 2.4 times.
Originality/value
The obtained results support distributed recycling and additive manufacturing, which has both environmental and economic benefits and increasing the number of colors in a 3-D print increases manufacturing savings.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the Thompson Endowments, MITACS and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada. The authors thank Alessia Romani for helpful discussions.
Credit authorship contribution statement: A.P.: writing – original draft, writing – review and editing, conceptualization, data curation, formal analysis, investigation, methodology, software, validation, visualization. B.B.: writing – review and editing, conceptualization, data curation, formal analysis, investigation, methodology, software, validation. D.V.: writing – review and editing, conceptualization, data curation, formal analysis, investigation, methodology, software, validation, supervision, project administration. M.D.: conceptualization, methodology, writing – review and editing, validation, resources, supervision, project administration, funding acquisition. J.M.P.: conceptualization, writing – original draft, writing – review and editing, data curation, formal analysis, methodology, validation, supervision, resources, project administration, funding acquisition.
Declaration of competing interest: The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
Citation
Petsiuk, A., Bloch, B., Debora, M. and Pearce, J.M. (2024), "Tool change reduction for multicolor fused filament fabrication through interlayer tool clustering implemented in PrusaSlicer", Rapid Prototyping Journal, Vol. 30 No. 8, pp. 1592-1609. https://doi.org/10.1108/RPJ-01-2024-0050
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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