COMPARATIVE STUDY OF PREDICTIVE MODELS AND REAL-WORLD DATA IN 3D PRINTING TIME ESTIMATION

The additive manufacturing technique plays a significant role in today's industrial environment, helping to meet customer demands. Various processes are available in 3D printing technology, including FDM (Fused Deposition Modeling), SLS (Selective Laser Sintering), EBM (Electron Beam Melting), LOM (Laminated Object Manufacturing), and DLP (Digital Light Processing), among others. The main objective of this project is to design and fabricate a portable 3D printer with a build volume of 200 x 200 x 150 mm³ that can be constructed with economical machining time. We will be using a 4-axis mechanism, where three axes represent the x, y, and z coordinates, and the fourth axis is dedicated to the extruder. The technology we are adopting is FDM, which involves using various materials such as PLA (Polylactic Acid), ABS (Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene), and HIPS (High Impact Polystyrene). In this process, filament material is heated to its melting point and deposited layer by layer. The combination of these layers forms the final 3D model. In this project, we will mathematically estimate the time required to print a simple part using 3D printing. Afterwards, we will compare our estimated time with the time estimated by the machine. In this comparison, we will also calculate the error and the percentage of error.