Nozzle condition monitoring in 3D printing

3D printing and particularly fused filament fabrication is widely used for prototyping and fabricating low-cost customized parts. However, current fused filament fabrication 3D printers have limited nozzle condition monitoring techniques to minimize nozzle clogging errors. Nozzle clogging is one of the most significant process errors in current fused filament fabrication 3D printers, and it affects the quality of the prototyped parts in terms of geometry tolerance, surface roughness, and mechanical properties. This paper proposes a nozzle condition monitoring technique in fused filament fabrication 3D printing using a vibration sensor, which is briefly described as follows. First, a bar mount that supports the liquefier in fused filament fabrication extruder was modeled as a beam excited by a system of process forces. The boundary conditions were identified, and the applied forces were analyzed for Direct and Bowden types of fused filament fabrication extruders. Second, a new 3D printer with a fixed extruder and a moving platform was designed and built for conducting nozzle condition monitoring experiments. Third, nozzle clogging was simulated by reducing the nozzle extrusion temperature, which caused partial solidification of the filament around inner walls of the nozzle. Fourth, sets of experiments were performed by measuring the vibrations of a bar mount during extrusion of polylactic acid, acrylonitrile butadiene styrene, and SemiFlex filaments via Direct and Bowden types of fused filament fabrication extruders. Findings of the current study show that nozzle clogging in fused filament fabrication 3D printers can be monitored using an accelerometer sensor by measuring extruder’s bar mount vibrations. The proposed technique can be used efficiently for monitoring nozzle clogging in fused filament fabrication 3D printers as it is based on the fundamental process modeling.