Proposed build guidelines for use in fused deposition modeling to reduce build time and material volume

The emergence of Fused Deposition Modeling as a small volume manufacturing process and a lack of explicit rules for improving the efficiency of this process bring necessity to the development of build guidelines. This work develops a proposed set of build guidelines for use in Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM). The guidelines are verified by the literature and experience, and validated by statistical analysis of quantitative FDM build data and qualitative review of example cases from student projects. The experimental data are obtained using the fabrication protocol for a Dimension SST Fused Deposition Modeling machine. Using simulation software known as Catalyst(TM), build time and material volume characteristics of many components of varying size and complexity were calculated. Eventually, this area of research should result in a robust set of rules that can fundamentally reduce the costs associated with FDM and can assist its ascent as a feasible full-scale manufacturing process.