Colourful fused filament fabrication method based on transitioning waste infilling technology with a colour surface model

Abstract

Purpose

Fused filament fabrication (FFF) is a common additive manufacturing method that is widely used owing to its low cost, environmental friendliness and safety. Colour models are needed because of their ability to express more information, but high printing quality and efficiency are difficult to achieve with the existing FFF colour printing methods because of the “inertia” of printing. Inertia refers to the feature of the former colour material remaining in the molten cavity when switching colours in colour FFF printing. The purpose of this paper is to propose a new FFF colour printing method to reduce printing material usage and printing time.

Design/methodology/approach

A new FFF colour printing method that uses transitioning waste to construct the part is proposed. Based on the freedom of the colour surface model’s interior space, the internal fill and support of the print model are generated using the transitioning waste to reduce printing material usage and printing time and to achieve environmentally friendly colour printing. The modified elite ant system (EAS) algorithm is used to construct and optimize this method based on the colour surface model.

Findings

A colour printing experiment is performed using a colour-mixing FFF printer platform with a special waste extrusion module. The experimental results show that this method can significantly reduce material and time consumption compared to the commonly used method. The printed part produced by this method also has high surface quality.

Originality/value

A new FFF colour printing method that uses transitioning waste to construct the part is proposed. Based on the freedom of the colour surface model’s interior space, the internal fill and support of the print model are generated using the transitioning waste to reduce printing material usage and printing time and to achieve environmentally friendly colour printing. The modified EAS algorithm is used to construct and optimize this method based on the colour surface model. A special waste extrusion module is developed.

Citation

Wang, Z., Shen, H., Wu, S. and Fu, J. (2021), "Colourful fused filament fabrication method based on transitioning waste infilling technology with a colour surface model", Rapid Prototyping Journal, Vol. 27 No. 1, pp. 145-154. https://doi.org/10.1108/RPJ-04-2020-0072