Enhancing Mechanical Properties of Thin-Walled Structures Using Non-Planar Extrusion Based Additive Manufacturing

Traditional extrusion based additive manufacturing (AM) processes build parts by depositing material in planar layers. The development of processes that adopt a non-planar approach is becoming a subject of significant interest in AM research. It is expected that such processes will impart superior mechanical strength to anisotropic and thin-walled structures, and will especially be useful in exploiting continuous fiber reinforced composites in additive manufacturing. This paper presents an extrusion based non-planar additive manufacturing process. The process allows for the deposition of material along 3-dimensional paths, providing the capability to reorient deposition head, build objects on curved platforms, and create complete structures using one continuous strand. Two different parts are fabricated and tested in this paper. One is produced using the developed process, while the other is created using a commercial FDM 3D printer. The two specimens are then mechanically tested to examine their behavior in two different loading configurations, and to investigate the effect that the deposition method and orientation has on the failure mode.