An Improved Two-Level Support Structure for Extrusion-Based Additive Manufacturing

Feng, Ruiliang; Li, Xianda; Zhu, Lin; Thakur, Atul; Wei, Xiangzhi

doi:10.1016/j.rcim.2020.101972

Cited by 24 publications

(25 citation statements)

References 34 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…A few approaches have been reported in the past literature in this context. For example, Figure 3(a) illustrates two-level support generated by the approach of Jiang et al (2019b) and Figure 3(b) shows another two-level support of Feng et al (2021). Feng et al (2021) had validated that the tree-shaped Level 2 support saves more materials.…”

Section: Two-level Support Structuresmentioning

confidence: 98%

“…For example, Figure 3(a) illustrates two-level support generated by the approach of Jiang et al (2019b) and Figure 3(b) shows another two-level support of Feng et al (2021). Feng et al (2021) had validated that the tree-shaped Level 2 support saves more materials. In this paper, we propose an approach to further improve Level 2 support.…”

Section: Two-level Support Structuresmentioning

confidence: 98%

“…Zhu et al (2019a) proposed an experimental method based on factorial design to obtain the expression of LGL in terms of layer thickness t, tilted angle u and the cross-section diameter d. With fixing other parameters: using Kossel Delta 3D printer and polylactic acid material, as well as fixing temperature at 190°C, the deposition speed at 20 mm/s and the fan speed is 250 RPM, LGL of a bar is expressed as equation (1). Note that the experimental statistics are summarized in the appendix of Feng et al (2021).…”

Section: Two-level Support Structuresmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In their approach, the bars that support a common beam were allowed to merge. Furthermore, Feng et al (2021) designed the Level 2 supports by allowing the bars supporting different beams to merge.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 3 more Smart Citations

A hybrid of genetic algorithm and particle swarm optimization for reducing material waste in extrusion-basedadditive manufacturing

Feng

Jiang

Sun

et al. 2021

RPJ

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to report the design of a lightweight tree-shaped support structure for fused deposition modeling (FDM) three-dimensional (3D) printed models when the printing path is considered as a constraint. Design/methodology/approachA hybrid of genetic algorithm (GA) and particle swarm optimization (PSO) is proposed to address the topology optimization of the tree-shaped support structures, where GA optimizes the topologies of the trees and PSO optimizes the geometry of a fixed tree-topology. Creatively, this study transforms each tree into an approximate binary tree such that GA can be applied to evolve its topology efficiently. Unlike FEM-based methods, the growth of tree branches is based on a large set of FDM 3D printing experiments. FindingsThe hybrid of GA and PSO is effective in reducing the volume of the tree supports. It is shown that the results of the proposed method lead to up to 46.71% material savings in comparison with the state-of-the-art approaches. Research limitations/implicationsThe proposed approach requires a large number of printing experiments to determine the function of the yield length of a branch in terms of a set of critical parameters. For brevity, one can print a small set of tree branches (e.g. 30) on a single platform and evaluate the function, which can be used all the time after that. The steps of GA for topology optimization and those of PSO for geometry optimization are presented in detail. Originality/valueThe proposed approach is useful for the designers and manufacturers to save materials and printing time in fabricating complex models using the FDM technique. It can be adapted to the design of support structures for other additive manufacturing techniques such as Stereolithography and selective laser melting.

show abstract

Section: Two-level Support Structuresmentioning

confidence: 98%

Section: Two-level Support Structuresmentioning

confidence: 98%

Section: Two-level Support Structuresmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

A hybrid of genetic algorithm and particle swarm optimization for reducing material waste in extrusion-basedadditive manufacturing

Feng

Jiang

Sun

et al. 2021

RPJ

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…The method saves up to 8% material and 13% print time compared to the results obtained by the Autodesk Meshmixer (Schmidt and Umetani, 2014), and it has a computation time from minutes to hours. They further stabilized the fabrication process and reduced the material waste by using a two-level support structure, where the first level uses beam-supports and the second level uses tree-supports (Feng et al , 2021). To speed up the tree generation process, Zhang et al (2019) presented a D&C strategy to iteratively create branches through the local barycenters.…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Escaping Tree-Support (ET-Sup): minimizing contact points for tree-like support structures in additive manufacturing

Kwok

2021

RPJ

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Purpose Support structures are often needed in additive manufacturing (AM) to print overhangs. However, they are the extra materials that must be removed afterwards. When the supports have many contacts to the model or are even enclosed inside some concavities, removing them is very challenging and has a risk of damaging the part. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to develop a new type of tree-support, named Escaping Tree-Support (ET-Sup), which tries to build all the supports onto the build plate to minimize the number of contact points. Design/methodology/approach The methodology is to first classify the support points into three categories: clear, obstructed and enclosed. A clear point has nothing between it and the build plate; an obstructed point is not clear, but there exists a path for it to reach the build plate; and an enclosed point has no way to reach the build plate. With this classification, the path for the obstructed points to come clear can be found through linking them to the clear points. All the operations are performed efficiently with the help of a ray representation. Findings The method is tested on different overhang features, including a lattice ball and a mushroom shape with a concave cap. All the supports generated for the examples can find their way to the build plate, which looks like they are escaping from the model. The computation time is around one second for these cases. Originality/value This is the first time truly realizing this “escaping” property in the generation of tree-like support structures. With this ET-Sup, it is expected that the AM industries can reduce the manufacturing lead time and save much labor work in post-processing.

show abstract

Mechanical property estimation for additive manufacturing parts with supports

Günaydın,

Gunpinar

2023

Int J Adv Manuf Technol

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

An Improved Two-Level Support Structure for Extrusion-Based Additive Manufacturing

Cited by 24 publications

References 34 publications

A hybrid of genetic algorithm and particle swarm optimization for reducing material waste in extrusion-basedadditive manufacturing

A hybrid of genetic algorithm and particle swarm optimization for reducing material waste in extrusion-basedadditive manufacturing

Escaping Tree-Support (ET-Sup): minimizing contact points for tree-like support structures in additive manufacturing

Mechanical property estimation for additive manufacturing parts with supports

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About