Abstract
End-user-driven product customization and continued demands for cost and time saving have generated a renewed interest in agile manufacturing based on improvements on Rapid Prototyping (RP) technologies. However, a shift from "prototyping" to "manufacturing" necessitates several improvements including a greater flexibility in choice of materials. This paper presents the development of a novel extrusion-based system, for fused deposition modeling (FDM) technology, which will broaden the range of material selection. It has been observed that in FDM the main obstacle for the use of new materials often comes from a need of an intermediate material form such as a filament. The novel system discussed in this paper, consisting of a mini-extruder mounted on a high-precision positioning system, is fed with bulk material in granulated form. This configuration opens up opportunities for the use of wider range of materials, making the FDM to become a viable alternative manufacturing process for specialty products.
