Design and evaluation of non-planar material extrusion on A3-axis printer

The use of material extrusion (MEX) has increased rapidly due to the affordability of 3D printers. This has led to a growing demand for improved print quality, high fidelity, strength, or fast print times. In this study, a non-planar approach for better surface quality is investigated. The hardware of a 3-axis MEX printer was developed together with testing new software for non-planar slicing. The aim was to identify the most influential parameter combinations using design of experiments. A novel method for measuring surface quality was presented together with future research work.