An Improved Height Difference Based Model of Height Profile for Drop-on-Demand 3D Printing With UV Curable Ink

TL;DR

This paper introduces an enhanced height profile model for drop-on-demand UV curable ink 3D printing, improving accuracy by accounting for volume and area changes, validated through extensive experiments.

Contribution

It extends a previous model to better handle 2D patterns with multiple passes, ensuring volume conservation and reducing height profile errors.

Findings

Model achieves lower RMS height errors than existing models.

Validated with six different drop patterns.

Consistent accuracy for 2D and 1D patterns.

Abstract

This paper proposes an improved height profile model for drop-on-demand 3D printing with UV curable ink. It is extended from a previously validated model and computes height profile indirectly from volume and area propagation to ensure volume conservation. To accommodate 2D patterns using multiple passes, volume change and area change within region of interest are modeled as a piecewise function of height difference before drop deposition. Model coefficients are experimentally obtained and validated with bootstrapping of experimental samples. Six different drop patterns are experimentally validated. The RMS height profile errors for 2D patterns from the proposed model are consistently smaller than existing models from literature and are on the same level as 1D patterns reported in our previous publication.