Design and manufacturing of graded density components by material extrusion technologies

Innovative design methods and manufacturing technologies, such as lattice structures optimization and additive manufacturing, allow for the production of functional and extremely complex components. Recent literature shows limits in geometric modeling and data exchange, highlighting some improvements in the design of variable density lattice structures mainly for powder bed fusion technologies. Similar improvements are not available for material extrusion (MEX) technologies which show technological and numerical limits related to the computer numerical control programming language (G-code) generated by computer aided manufacturing (CAM) software. This work aims at overcoming the limits in fabricating graded density shell-based lattice structures for MEX technology by using the infill patterns available in the CAM software and editing the G-code based on a density map defined by volumetric models. Combining two usually separated phases, i.e., the geometric modeling and the CAM processing, several advantages are obtained, considering at the same time some of the technological constraints.The proposed approach is tested on a cubic sample and on a bracket fabricated by a fused filament fabrication technology. The results show that the method allows for the reduction of design efforts, amount of data exchanged, and processing time, obtaining an effective G-code and consistent components.