Abstract Scope |
This research proposes a support structure reduction methodology to improve surface quality and manufacturing cost. To eliminate or reduce the structure, we locally modify geometries of a CAD model and/or find optimum process parameters to minimize geometrical accuracy and to maximize surface quality. The proposed method consists of three steps. Firstly, we select parameters related to support generation, surface quality and build-fail. To do this, an additive manufacturing ontology for a material extrusion process is constructed. Secondly, we develop geometry-process-property libraries to study relationship among parameters. Finally, we develop an optimization process for preventing build-fail without support-structures to modify the geometries and process parameters. The proposed approach successfully searches for high-impact parameters related to support reduction, and the geometry and process parameter modification results in improvement in surface quality without support structures. |