Multi-extrusion additive manufacturing for error compensation: a demonstrative case study

The global additive manufacturing industry has been rapidly increasing, owing to its unique layer-by-layer production method While additive manufacturing has superior capabilities compared to traditional subtractive manufacturing, limitations still exist, which significantly hinder the larger-scale implementations of additive manufacturing. Some challenging issues include unsatisfactory dimensional accuracy, surface quality, etc. In the literature, extensive research efforts have dedicated to detecting, predicting, and compensating process errors using various methodologies. In this work, a new approach is proposed for error compensation using multi-extrusion additive manufacturing process. Three demonstrative case studies are conducted, i.e., multicolor and/or multimaterial printing, geometric error compensation, and rough surface compensation. Experimental results have shown that the proposed approach is effective in utilizing the multi-nozzle capability in additive manufacturing quality control. Notably, the proposed approach has remarkable potentials to be extended for in-situ error compensation. Our future Prays will focus on integrating the proposed approach with in-situ process monitoring approaches for layer-wise defection and compensation of process anomalies.