Effect of Implicitly Derived Infill Patterns on Mechanical Properties

One of the most important steps in the preprocessing stage of fused deposition modeling is the generation of a set of instructions that control every movement of the tool head, known as GCode, which is created by a slicer software. The tool path is dependent on various user defined inputs including infill pattern, infill density, layer height, and feed rate. All current slicers generate the path explicitly and do not consider certain geometries that will create critical voids such as thin walls and small corners. This work replicates a new implicit slicing method in which functionally derived infill patterns are overlaid onto each layer of a part reducing the possibility of voids and flaws. Further research investigating the effects of varying implicit infill patterns have on mechanical properties is also included. Stress and strain data is gathered for three different test cases, and the resulting mechanical properties for each case are compared.