A study of the effect of vibration on accuracy of 3D-printed parts via vat-photopolymerization

Abstract

Additive Manufacturing (AM) technology has emerged as a promising alternative for many industries, including aerospace, space, automobile, medical and biomedical. This is due to AM’s advantages over traditional manufacturing processes in terms of material savings, and the ability to produce customized microstructures and complex geometries. The result has been the manufacture of structures with optimum strength to weight ratios, especially when design for AM is optimized via finite element analysis. However, there are some challenges that impede AM. One challenge is the limited accuracy typically associated with all AM processes. Considerable investigations connect three-dimensional (3D) printing parameters, part scaling, and solid model discretization with AM printing accuracy. However, there appears to be a lack of knowledge regarding the effect of vibrations on the 3D printing accuracy. Additive manufacturing machines could be prone to vibration from adjacent machines in the workshop even when vibration isolation systems are deployed. Moreover, there are instances where intentional application of vibration during 3D printing has been found helpful to develop material structure. Therefore, it is of importance to investigate the effect of vibrations on 3D printing accuracy. In this study, controlled levels of vibrations were applied during the vat photopolymerization printing process, and a high-precision coordinate measuring machine (CMM) was used to correlate induced vibrations with dimensional and geometric accuracy of the printed parts.