Study on the use of alternative transmission mechanisms applied to additive manufacturing machines

摘要

Fused Filament Fabrication (FFF) is one of the widest Additive Manufacturing technologies used for the manufacturing of prototypes with complex geometry and different materials. However, nowadays commercial FFF machines have limitations in terms of process reliability and product quality. To overcome these limitations and increase the geometrical accuracy it is necessary to study the motion transmission mechanisms of the extruder head.In this sense, in this study, a development of an alternative transmission of linear movement in the Fused Filament Fabrication machines is proposed. Once the mechanism has been developed, this one is testing in order to quantify its accuracy. After the initial development, a virtual design will be generated, followed by a functional prototype. Manufacturing accuracy is usually 1 mm for domestic machines (±0.5) and better for industrial machines. The obtained results of the proposed transmission mechanism improve the accuracy up to 82 % and 0.27 was reached in the repeatability, that is a parameter not provided by the manufacturers.