Comparing the accuracy of professional and consumer grade 3D printers in complex models production

Abstract

This study aims at comparing the accuracy offered by professional and consumer grade 3D printing machines, inside a Fused Deposition Modelling (FDM) process of Additive Manufacturing (AM), in the realisation of complex models. It intends to verify, using an experimentally based approach, how much these two groups of 3D printers differ in terms of achieving complex geometry, surface quality and dimensional stability of additive models. Two consumer grade and professional 3D printers were selected and used for creating a complex model. Limits and benefits provided by each of them in engineering terms were investigated and reported. A religious building was used as a complex model, created by both 3D printers, scanned by reverse engineering technology, then processed by a software package for image processing. In this way, a comparison in models' accuracy was achieved. Results, graphically represented, show some notable differences between 3D printers in terms of accuracy and applicability. They also permit to make recommendations on practical usability of this technology.