Upper bound of feed rates in thermoplastic material extrusion based additive manufacturing

Published

March 2, 2020

Author(s)

Cheng Luo, Xiang Wang, Kalman D. Migler, Jonathan Seppala

Abstract

In this work, we develop a simple model to determine the upper bound of feed rates that do not cause jamming in materials extrusion based additive manufacturing, also known as fused deposition modeling (FDM)™ or fused-filament fabrication (FFF). We first derive a relation between the tube temperature and Péclet number for the solid portion of polymer filaments. We focus on the boundary between the solid and molten polymer in the heated portion of the tube. We find the Pécclet number that corresponds to the point at which this boundary makes contact with the nozzle and identify this as the upper bound of the feed rate. We compare our predictions to experimental results. We find good agreement for tube temperatures sufficiently above the glass- transition temperature, which is the temperature region of typical additive manufacturing.

Citation

Additive Manufacturing

Pub Type

Journals

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DOI Link

Keywords

Fused deposition modeling, FDM, material extrusion, modeling

Citation

Luo, C. , Wang, X. , Migler, K. and Seppala, J. (2020), Upper bound of feed rates in thermoplastic material extrusion based additive manufacturing, Additive Manufacturing, [online], https://doi.org/10.1016/j.addma.2019.101019 (Accessed October 8, 2025)