In addition to the raw materials and the printing system used, the extensive parameteri-zation in the slicer software has a significant influence on the additive manufacturing of components by means of fused filament deposition. Depending on the software used, this allows well over a hundred parameters to be set. A large number of the parameters de-scribe the production of a supporting infill structure and its density. Frequently, however, the infill produced is not visible from the outside because the component is enclosed by a polymer shell. However, using the GCode generated by the slicer software, it is possible to generate a geometric twin [01]. This can be compared and evaluated with data from a computed tomographic analysis on the printed component with regard to the quality of the print.

This approach was pursued in a joint research project between studio.201 GmbH and the Fraunhofer IMWS in Halle. A container was developed for this purpose, which can be loaded with a large number (up to 42) of standardized specimens and automatically measured and evaluated in the CT [02]. The individual specimens are identifiable by means of a digital marker and can thus be assigned to the geometric data generated from the GCode. The geometric data, generated from the manufacturing data (GCode) and a set of assumptions about the quantity and shape of the extruded path, are compared with the geometric data exported from the CT analysis [03]. The quality of the geometric description from the CT data is again dependent on the analysis volume (number of scanned samples) and the achievable detail resolution of the CT data set. As a result of the comparison, a parameterizable traffic light system provides a statement on the quali-ty and shape quality of the complete inner and outer component structure.

Literatur

[01] Felix W Baumann et al 2017 IOP Conf. Ser.: Mater. Sci. Eng. 280 012033: From GCode to STL: Reconstruct Models from 3D Printing as a Service

[02] Villarraga-Gómez, H., Peitsch, C. M., Ramsey, A., & Smith, S. T. (2018, July). The role of computed tomography in addi-tive manufacturing. In 2018 ASPE and euspen summer topical meeting: advancing precision in additive manufacturing (Vol. 69, pp. 201-209).

[03] Leonard, Fabien & Bruno, Giovanni. (2019). On nominal-actual comparisons for additive manufacturing applications. Conference: 9th Conference on Industrial Computed Tomography (iCT2019), Wels, Austria (pp. 25-28).