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Materials Science in Additive Manufacturing

ORIGINAL RESEARCH ARTICLE
A cylindrical path planning approach for additive

manufacturing of revolved components

Audelia Gumarus Dharmawan, Gim Song Soh*
Department of Engineering Product Development, Singapore University of Technology and Design,
Singapore

Abstract
Depositing on inclined cylindrical surfaces has recently gained interest due to its
potential for directly employing feedstock that forms part of the printed structure.
In this paper, we present our approach to perform cylindrical path planning through
converting a planar slicing data structure into a universal 3D polar data structure.
This has the advantage of using off-the-shelf slicing software and adapting it for
cylindrical path planning. Our approach is capable of generating cylindrical print
paths of various patterns such as linear raster, circular raster, hybrid contour, and
zigzag path. We demonstrate the capability of the approach to planning cylindrical
print paths for two different revolved components employing these three different
printing patterns. Actual printing experiments and tensile tests of the cylindrical part
using wire-arc additive manufacturing were conducted and reported. It was found
that they yield an average tensile strength that matches the strength of the 4340
feedstock.

Keywords: Cylindrical print; Path planning; Revolved part
*Corresponding author:
Gim Song Soh
(sohgimsong@sutd.edu.sg)
Citation: Dharmawan AG, Soh GS,
2022, A cylindrical path planning 1. Introduction
approach for additive manufacturing
of revolved components. Mater Sci Metal additive manufacturing (AM) is a deposition manufacturing technique that builds
Add Manuf, 1(1): 3. metallic parts layer by layer on top of a planar base substrate. This method has been
[1]
https://doi.org/10.18063/msam.v1i1.3 gaining increasing attention recently to fabricate complex metal components for various
Received: February 15, 2022 industries. [2-4] Compared with the traditional subtractive manufacturing technique,
Accepted: March 9, 2022 metal AM reduces material wastage and requires less human intervention as the process
can be completely automated from a computer-aided design (CAD) model. Lately,
[5]
Published Online: March 24, 2022 there has also been an increasing interest in using the AM technology on cylindrical or
[6]
Copyright: © 2022 Author(s). conical surfaces for fabricating revolved components, such as propeller, impeller, or
[7]
[8]
This is an Open Access article for cylindrical part repair. [9]
distributed under the terms of the
Creative Commons Attribution Most AM processes plan the print path in a planar layer-wise manner. The approach
License, permitting distribution,
and reproduction in any medium, typically involved slicing the three-dimensional (3D) CAD model into two-dimensional
[10]
provided the original work is (2D) planar geometries. The fabrication of complex parts that have overhanging
properly cited. structures or curved parts often relies on support structures, leading to additional
[11]
[12]
Publisher’s Note: Whioce manufacturing time and material wastage. Alternatively, they employed higher-order
Publishing remains neutral with kinematics by adding extra degrees of freedom to the printing system. A previous
[13]
regard to jurisdictional claims in
published maps and institutional study investigates the possibility of printing overhang features without the need for
affiliations. additional support structures under flat-position deposition conditions, but there is
[14]
Volume 1 Issue 1 (2022) 1 https://doi.org/10.18063/msam.v1i1.3