Discipline: Technology and Engineering
Subcategory: Civil/Mechanical/Manufacturing Engineering
Chinazaekpere Darlene Ochiobi - University of Georgia
3D printing originally known as additive manufacturing is a process of making 3 dimensional solid objects from a CAD file. This ground breaking technology is widely used for industrial and biomedical purposes such as building objects, tools, body parts and cosmetics. An important benefit of 3D printing is the cost reduction and manufacturing flexibility; complex parts are built at the fraction of the price. However, layer by layer printing of complex shapes adds error due to the surface roughness. Any such error results in poor quality products with inaccurate dimensions. The main purpose of this research is to measure the amount of printing errors for parts with different geometric shapes and to analyze them for finding optimal printing settings for minimizing the error. To analyze the effect of orientation and perimeter in 3D printing an ellipsoid was created using solid works.To access how successful the 3D printer was in manufacuring the geometic, a Coordinate measuring machine was used to compare and constrast the printer object with the blueprint.
We use a Design of Experiments framework, and focus on studying parts with cone and ellipsoid shapes. Two design factors orientation and perimeter were used. Orientation was set to four levels 0°, 30°, 60° and 90° while Perimeter was set to 3 levels (3,1) (1,3) and (2,2). We found that the orientation and the shape of geometric shapes have significant effect on the printing error. From our analysis we determined the optimal orientation that gives the least printing error. The use of 3D printing is not just limited to the building industry but to all facet of life.Using different kind of ellipsoid has helped us to understand how the change in dimension of ellipsoid affect our errors and also the kind of errors expected based on the size of ellipsoid. Future research includes the use of larger sample size, an analysis on different geometrics, material and addition of other factors such as material, height and days of production.
References: World’s first 3D-printed apartment building constructed in China – CNET (CNET) http://www.cnet.com/news/worlds-first-3d-printedapartment-building-constructed-in-chin
How Patient Specific 3D Printed Organ Replicas Help Patients Reach Informed Decisions (3DPrintcom) http://3dprint.com/9159/3d-printed-organ-replicas/
3D Printer-3D Printing-GS Industrial Co.,Ltd (3D Printer-3D Printing-GS Industrial Co.,Ltd) http://www.okgsok.com/en/ Printing_Node.aspx?id=18
Funder Acknowledgement(s): I want to thank my Principal Investigator Dr. Kamran Paynabar and my graduate mentor Chitta Ranjan for their help and support. I also want to thank Dr. Chimdimnma Esimai, Dr. Kan Wang, Xiaowei Yue, Ms.Tia Jackson, and the SURE program 2015. This project was funded by: Sandia National Lab, SURE 2015, Industrial and Systems Engineering Department, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA.
Faculty Advisor: Kamran Paynabar, kamran.paynabar@isye.gatech.edu