Pre- and in-process dimensional compensation in the selective thermoplastic electrophotographic process

Abstract

As a cutting-edge additive manufacturing (AM) technology, the selective thermoplastic electrophotographic process (STEP) has opened up possibilities for mass production with its combination of real engineering plastics and potential high part quality. To improve the accuracy and fidelity of STEP for the most demanding applications, this paper proposes a novel method encompassing both pre-processing and in-process dimensional compensations. Iterative compensation before production is achieved through physics-driven simulation, resulting in input masks that better match the required dimensions at the design level. Layer-wise compensation is implemented during the production process through the laser profiler system, thereby suppressing the accumulation of surface unevenness during printing. With the compensation method proposed in this paper, the maximum distortion during simulated printing is decreased by 86.2%, and surface unevenness is effectively controlled during the printing process.