A new flexible layer fabrication method for the jet deposition system to accelerate fabrication speed

The key principle of the jet deposition rapid prototyping (RP) system is to deliver material through a jet and deposit the liquefied material onto a platform to build a physical model. Model Maker (MM) RP system is one of the jet deposition processes with the smallest slice thickness and better model accuracy. In order to maintain thinner layer thickness and model accuracy, a cutter is employed to plane off the deposited surface. The fabrication speed for MM models is extremely low because of the employment of the tiny jet and the cutting operation. The model interior filling does not affect the model accuracy very much but it does significantly affect the fabrication speed. Hence, a new flexible layer fabrication method is proposed in this paper to separate the fabrication processes of the profile and the interior, respectively, in order to maintain model accuracy and thinner slice thickness, and to accelerate the fabrication speed.