Determination and Compensation of the Shrinkage Behavior of Cylindrical Elements in the FDM Process

Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM) is an additive manufacturing process to produce complex thermoplastic geometries layer by layer. The filament is melted in a nozzle, iteratively deposited, and then cools down. Due to the solidification process, the deposited filament strands deviate from their intended position due to shrinkage, resulting in significant geometric deviations in the final part. In terms of dimensional accuracy, there is a need for optimization, especially for local curved geometries in relation to the global part with higher nominal dimensions. The aim of this study is to investigate the size and shape deviations for cylindrical FDM elements and to compensate the expected deformations by using an in-house software with adaptive scaling factors in the x-y plane. Previous studies mainly focus on simple, non-curved objects, this study also considers the influence of curvature and global as well as local deviations on the final part.