The development of a thermal extrusion based rapid prototyping mechatronics system

The rapid prototyping (RP) technology can greatly reduce the production cycle time and tremendously contribute to quality. The objective of this paper is to develop a thermal extrusion based RP mechatronics system which is equipped with a linear 2D planar motor. The RP material is wax. The XYZ table is controlled by a PC based multi-axis DSP motion control card. The RP material flow rate of thermal extrusion head is controlled by a PC based D/A card. The RP software technique includes uniform slicing, adaptive slicing, tool path and motion code generation. Based on the experimental results, the proposed RP mechatronics system can produce good quality RP parts.