Fabrication of plastic parts is an important scope of application
for various branches of industry. This does not only
concern manufacturing of end products but also production of
sample parts in small lot sizes. Currently, most plastic parts are
injection-molded. Consequently, it is first necessary to produce
appropiate moldings, for example by milling of metal. This is
very time-consuming on one hand and uneconomical concerning
costs for production in small lot sizes on the other hand. Furthermore,
the variety of forms is restricted considerably which
is a clear disadvantage concerning the production of prototypes
or spare parts. The use of a free-forming droplet generator for
producing plastic parts can provide remedy.
The patented principle of the printing process used in this
approach is to produce droplets of liquified plastic in a preparation
unit. Sequential discharge of these droplets builds a part
in the installation space by solidifying of the droplets into balls.
Since each 3D printing process needs its own data preprocessing,
this article presents its fundamentals. STL data is used as
input data and allows almost any kind of geometry. In general,
a typical workflow for processing STL data is as follows: slicing
volume data in order to gain contours that form 2D boarders,
offsetting contours for a true to scale building process, filling of
slices dependent on (offset) contours and generation of machinecode
(g-code) that can be executed by the 3D printer in order to
build an accurate and high-quality part.
The model used in this approach is based on the droplets
produced by the machine. A more detailed description of all the
process-specific invidual steps from slicing up to g-code generation
is presented within the scope of this paper. The continual development
of custom-made algorithms based on process-specific
models and parameters has resulted in the generation of g-code
that could be executed on a 3D plastic polymer printer based on
droplet generation for the first time. The resulting sample parts
are very appealing.
In conclusion, the results have shown that the whole production
process can be a significant benefit especially for rapid
prototyping of sample parts or spare parts.
«
Fabrication of plastic parts is an important scope of application
for various branches of industry. This does not only
concern manufacturing of end products but also production of
sample parts in small lot sizes. Currently, most plastic parts are
injection-molded. Consequently, it is first necessary to produce
appropiate moldings, for example by milling of metal. This is
very time-consuming on one hand and uneconomical concerning
costs for production in small lot sizes on the other hand....
»
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