Hybrid Printing Method of Polymer and Continuous Fiber-Reinforced Thermoplastic Composites (CFRTPCs) for Pipes through Double-Nozzle Five-Axis Printer.

The most widely used 3D process, fused deposition modeling (FDM), has insufficient interlayer adhesion due to its layer-by-layer forming method. A support material is also essential for the hollow parts and cantilevers. Moreover, the polymer materials used have limited mechanical properties.

Oriented to Multi-Branched Structure Unsupported 3D Printing Method Research.

For the traditional three-axis (3D) configuration of the additive manufacturing (AM) platform, when printing the target model with a multi-branched structure, it is imperative to construct adequate support structures. To eliminate the use of support during the printing process, a non-directional unsupported 3D printing method for five-axis AM is proposed in this paper. By carrying out the K-means clustering algorithm, the coarse partition of the model is obtained, and then the fine decomposition represented by a sequence of separating planes is determined by a local dynamic search adjustment algorithm according to manufacturing constraints.