Using Acetone Vapour Treatment to Improve Secondary Finishing Operations in Additive Manufacturing

摘要

Additive Manufacturing (AM) is necessary when the complexity of a desired part is relatively high and conventional manufacturing processes will not suffice. In AM, parts are produced in a layer-by-layer form from a Computer Aided Design (CAD) model. The current practice in industry is to exchange the data from CAD to Stereo-Lithography (STL) format [1]. STL is a triangulated tessellation and offers simplified data for faster computational slicing. One of the issues with AM is the associated error caused by the staircase effect as seen in Figure 1. The staircase effect has driven the necessity of secondary finishing operations with a goal of improving surface finish and aesthetic appearance. This paper will discuss current industry practices, and propose an optimized development of a relatively new method: vapour treating AM parts with acetone.