Effect of a Compliant Build Platform on the Warpage in Material Extrusion Additive Manufacturing

The scalability of material extrusion additive manufacturing (ME-AM) to 3D print end use components is hindered due to residual thermal stresses and warpage of printed parts. In this work an in-process warpage mitigation technique is introduced which uses a novel Compliant Build Platform (CBP) to allow shrinkage of the solidifying part layers during printing. For this study the CBP was 3D printed, and the specimen was then printed on it using acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS) thermoplastic material. An in-process heating (IH) step was implemented after depositing each layer to allow uniform shrinkage of all layers of the specimen. Using optical profilometry the specimens’ warpage was measured. Results indicate that this CBP-IH technique reduces warpage in most specimens by 80-95%. This improvement was observed without using a heated chamber and at build platform temperatures below glass transition of ABS. The results motivate further investigation of this technique with high temperature thermoplastics.