A Robotic Cell for Multi-Resolution Additive Manufacturing

Extrusion-based additive manufacturing (AM), also known as fused deposition modeling (FDM) extrudes filaments through a heated nozzle and builds a part layer-by-layer. Using a smaller diameter nozzle can achieve better surface finish. However, there is a trade-off between surface finish and build times as using a small diameter nozzle leads to smaller layer thickness and long build times. Traditional FDM printers create a part with planar layers, and this restricts control over fiber orientations. This paper presents a robotic cell for multi-resolution AM. The cell consists of two 6 degrees of freedom (DOF) robot manipulators capable of printing non-planar and/or planar layers. We describe algorithms for decomposing parts into multi-resolution layers and generating collision-free trajectories for the robot manipulators. We validate our approach by printing five parts with multi-resolution.