Process speeding up via deposition planning in fused deposition-based layered manufacturing processes

Compared to conventional manufacturing processes, fused deposition (FD)-based layered manufacturing processes have dramatically reduced the part design and manufacturing time. However, it is necessary to further enhance their process productivity. To this end, improvement of FD process efficiency is studied in this paper. A build time analysis is conducted and the deposition parameters that can be used to speed up fabrication processes are identified. The tool path-based deposition planning approach is extended for ensuring layer quality when the build process is expedited under adjusted deposition parameters. A test part was built to demonstrate the proposed approach.