Abstract
This research aims to develop a set of material dispensing system and process that meets the requirement of manufacturing thermoplastic product by using the new “High Speed Flexible 3D Freeform Technique”. Dispensing ribbon-shaped material and forming along the trajectory tangent to the surface of three-dimensional manufacturing part are the characteristics of the High Speed Flexible 3D Freeform Technique that makes it different from other existing rapid prototyping processes. Accordingly, this research tested the feasibility of ribbon-shaped dispensing and five basic process operations: dispensing, shaping, stacking, attaching and stitching. It was found that operation details such as relative position between the dispensing head and the dispensed material and the process parameters including dispensing speed, material feed rate and dispensing head temperature were important factors. Separate experiments were conducted to determine the ranges of these factors for best dispensing and forming results. According to the above results, a prototype material dispensing system including a feeding mechanism, a dispensing head and a mechanism for adjusting the width of dispensed material were design and built. Using the prototype system, ribbon-shaped material dispensing, the five basic process operations were demonstrated and various example 3D objects were successfully fabricated according to the features of the High Speed Flexible 3D Freeform Technique.