FDM 方式 3D プリンタによる疑似中空構造出力法の検討

抄録

The fuse deposition modeling (FDM) type 3D printer is getting popular for the personal usage. Presently, the main purpose of the FDM 3D printing is to make an outer shape example and the printer driver does not consider making strong parts enough to use as mechanical parts. In our former study, we investigated how to make a mechanical parts and found that if we design the internal structure by 3D-CAD, we can make any structures including solid ABS structure (by slicing the solid part to many thin planes) except the needs of making scaffold for constructing the top surface. The conventional internal structure for the output products of 3D printer is a lattice structure like corrugated paper box or a honeycomb structure. Both are too strong and too heavy for only constructing the upper surface, and reduce the strength/weight ratio of the end products especially for the torsional load. The driver sometimes output a special scaffold structure that is easily removed from output products even if it is an inner space. These structures also make the strength/weight ratio worse. In this paper, we propose a column and beam style scaffold like the internal structures of buildings. We found that very fine column is enough to support making the top surface and we could drastically reduce the scaffold weight. In the case of the slant top surface like the upper surface of the hollow sphere, we found that we do not need to prepare the column by generating the slant beam from the side wall. These scaffold making method will be a standard for making better end products of FDM 3D printer.