TY  - JOUR
AB  - Purpose The purpose of this study is to propose an automatic leveling method for a printing platform based on a three-point coordinate feedback. The proposed method is used in fused deposition modeling additive manufacturing systems. The coordinate error of the leveled plane is constrained to within  ± 0.2 mm, which is less than the printed layer thickness.Design/methodology/approach First, the model of the forward and inverse solutions of the parallel arm is obtained based on the principles of vector algebra. Second, the automatic leveling mechanism for collecting the z-coordinate is designed. The best position of the virtual origin plane is obtained by comparing the z-coordinates of the test points. Finally, after making multiple adjustments through a closed-loop z-coordinate feedback, the parallelism of the printing plane and the virtual origin plane is limited to an effective range.Findings The experimental results show that after three leveling attempts, the z-coordinate of the test points can be constrained to within  ± 0.2 mm, which shows that this method can effectively achieve automatic leveling in a delta three-dimensional (3D) printer.Originality/value This study presents a novel and distinctive delta 3D printer leveling system by designing a leveling mechanism and a leveling algorithm. The method uses a closed-loop feedback mode to make the leveling process simple, convenient and efficient without requiring major changes to the printer. The error after leveling is less than the printed layer thickness, which fully guarantees the accuracy of the leveling process.
VL  - 25
IS  - 7
SN  - 1355-2546
DO  - 10.1108/RPJ-03-2019-0052
UR  - https://doi.org/10.1108/RPJ-03-2019-0052
AU  - Wang Yuezong
AU  - Wang Zhaodong
AU  - Guo Mengfei
AU  - Zhang Xin
PY  - 2019
Y1  - 2019/01/01
TI  - Research on an automatic leveling method with a feedback mode for a parallel 3D printer
T2  - Rapid Prototyping Journal
PB  - Emerald Publishing Limited
SP  - 1250
EP  - 1265
Y2  - 2024/04/19
ER  -