A Study on the Errors of 2D Circular Trajectories Generated on a 3D Printer

Abstract

This paper presents a study on the movement precision and accuracy of an extruder system related to the print bed on a 3D printer evaluated using the features of 2D circular trajectories generated by simultaneous displacement on x and y-axes. A computer-assisted experimental setup allows the sampling of displacement evolutions, measured with two non-contact optical sensors. Some processing procedures of the displacement signals are proposed in order to evaluate and to describe the circular trajectories errors (e.g., open and closed curves fitting, the detection of recurrent periodical patterns in x and y-motions, low pass numerical filtering, etc.). The description of these errors is suitable to certify that the 3D printer works correctly (keeping the characteristics declared by the manufacturer) for maintenance purpose sand, especially, for computer-aided correction of accuracy (e.g., by error compensation).