The application of the skipped layer interior method and higher depositionheight to accelerate fabrication speed of the Model Maker rapid prototyping system

The Model Maker (MM) process is one of the jet deposition rapid prototyping (RP) systems that delivers material through a jet and deposits the liquefi ed material onto a platform to build a physical model. The fabrication spee d of the MM model is extremely low because of the low deposition rate and c utting operation. In order to accelerate the fabrication speed of the MM, t he line pitch of the MM processing parameters was reconfigured to increase the deposition rate and, hence, increase the deposition height. The cutting operation of the MM removes almost half of the deposited material because of the requirements of model accuracy and layer thickness. In order to redu ce the amount of the removed material, a skipped layer interior method was employed. The reconfiguration of the line pitch to increase deposition heig ht enabled more interior layers to be skipped and, hence, less deposited ma terial was removed. Therefore, the fabrication speed was significantly acce lerated. The results short. that the average model printing: time saved was around 40% for all layer thicknesses, while the model accuracy and the lay er thickness were still the same as in the original MM process.