3D-Printing Plates without “Support”

Authors: Yasusi Kanada

Abstract:

When printing a plate (or dish) by an FDM 3D printer, the process normally requires support material, which causes several problems. This paper proposes a method for forming thin plates without using wasteful support material. This method requires several extraordinary parameter values when slicing plates. The experiments show that the plates can, for the most part, be successfully formed using a conventional slicer and a 3D printer; however, seams between layers spoil them and the quality of printed objects strongly depends on the slicer.

Keywords: Fused deposition modeling (FDM), 3D printing, Support-less, Layer seam, Slicer.

Digital Object Identifier (DOI): doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1107445

References:

[1] Kanada, Y., “3D-printing of Generative Art by using Combination and Deformation of Direction-specified 3D Parts,” 4th International Conference on Additive Manufacturing and Bio-Manufacturing (ICAM-BM 2014, Beijing), November 2014, http://bit.ly/1zcMCaO
[2] Kanada, Y., “Method of Designing, Partitioning, and Printing 3D Objects with Specified Printing Direction,” 2014 International Symposium on Flexible Automation (ISFA 2014), July 2014, http://bit.ly/1EqhV5d
[3] Kanada, Y., “3D Printing of Generative Art using the Assembly and Deformation of Direction-specified Parts,” Rapid Prototyping Journal, accepted for publication, 2015.
[4] Kanada, Y., “Natural-Direction-Consistent 3D-Design and -Printing Methods,” International Journal of Computer, Control, Quantum and Information Engineering, WASET, Vol. 9, No. 4, pp. 689-693, 2015.
[5] Kanada, Y., “Let’s make a plate by a 3D printer without using support,” I/O, Kogakusha, April 2015 (in Japanese).
[6] Kanada, Y., “Creating Thin Objects with Bit-mapped Pictures / Characters by FDM Helical 3D Printing,” 8th International Conference on Leading Edge Manufacturing in 21st Century (LEM21), October 2015.
[7] Kramer, T. R., Proctor, F. M., Messina, E., “The NIST RS274NGC Interpreter - Version 3,” National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), NISTIR 6556, August 2000.
[8] Moore, D. M., “Instant Slic3r,” Packt Publishing, September 2013.
[9] Büttrich, S., “3D Modeling with OpenSCAD - Part 1,” in Canessa, E., Fonda, C., and Zennaro, ed., “Low-cost 3D Printing for Science, Education, and Sustainable Development”, pp. 83–86, http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.410.790&rep= rep1&type=pdf#page=85
[10] Kintel M., “3D Modeling with OpenSCAD - Part 2,” in Canessa, E., Fonda, C., and Zennaro, ed., “Low-cost 3D Printing for Science, Education, and Sustainable Development”, pp. 87–90, http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.410.790&rep= rep1&type=pdf#page=89
[11] Ranellucci, A., “Reprap, Slic3r and the Future of 3D Printing,” in Canessa, E., Fonda, C., and Zennaro, ed., “Low-cost 3D Printing for Science, Education, and Sustainable Development”, pp. 75–82, http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.410.790&rep= rep1&type=pdf#page=77
[12] “Skeinforge”, http://fabmetheus.crsndoo.com/wiki/index.php/Skeinforge
[13] Dasyn.com, “Printing a Dish by Helical Head Motion,” http://youtu.be/5P1vaahzW98
[14] Dasyn.com, “Dasyn”, http://store.shopping.yahoo.co.jp/dasyn/ (or http://bit.ly/1EZ4SZI) (in Japanese)
[15] Kanada, Y., “A Challenge of Printing Dishes using CAD software and without Supports”, http://www.kanadas.com/weblog/2015/02/cad.html (or http://bit.ly/173UG6b) (in Japanese)