Step-Event-Driven Feedback Control Of 3D Printers:Design And Implementation

With the increasing development of science and technology,3D printer is gradually integrated into people’s lives,the application in various industries is more and more wide.We study a kind of 3D printer,which uses stepping motor as the motion execution mechanism,and the motion control method of this kind of 3D printer is usually adopts the open loop control.Due to the step motor has the phenomenon of losing step or blocking,belt slop,and the dynamics of the support structure frequently introduce large error,which will lead to 3D printer has lower printing precision and speed,when the 3D printer is in the work process.Considering the traditional stepping motor closed-loop control method is too complex to apply to 3D printer control system,so we mainly proposes a step-event-driven closed-loop control method of 3D printer,and designs and builds a closed-loop control system of 3D printer that is used to test and verify the control algorithm.Our research is based on the fused deposition 3D printer.Firstly,we define a step as an event and design the closed-loop control algorithm of step motor,according to the motion characteristics of step motor,then we build a physical experiment platform and preliminarily validate the algorithm.Then on the base of these,the closed-loop control system of 3D printer is designed,and the overall design scheme of the control system and the mechanism of multi axis coordinated control are given.In our research,the linear position sensor which checks the real position of the nozzle directly is selected,and it overcomes the error which is caused by step loss or block,belt slop,and the dynamics of the support structure.My research focuses on the hardware design and software design of the 3D printer closed-loop control system,and the detailed flow chart and circuit diagram are given.Finally,the performance test of the 3D printer control system is carried out.The test results show that the algorithm which is proposed in our research can effectively improve the printing precision and speed of the 3D printer.