Optimum Distribution of Minimum Printing Time Structures for Additive Manufacturing

Abstract

Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM) is an additive manufacturing technique characterized by its capability to manufacture parts with complex geometries, whose main disadvantage is long printing times. There is an inverse relation between the printing time and the stiffness of the final part, thus, the solution to different application cases is a technical-economic decision. Based on this, this work proposes a strategy to determine the optimal distribution of the printing patterns that allow for obtaining the highest possible stiffness of the part with the shortest printing time. The contribution of printing the in-fill regions and the interfaces that divide them to the total process time is considered. The pattern distribution is obtained using a level-set topological derivative-based multimaterial topology optimization algorithm. Fundamental concepts of the method and the printing time cost function characterization are presented. Also, several numerical application examples and implementation of the method in real cases of FDM are shown.