A preliminary 6 Dofs robot based setup for fused deposition modeling

This paper is aimed at describing a preliminary setup based on a robotic arm with 6 degrees of freedom that could be exploited to build 3D printed objects that better suit their specification. Standard Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM) 3D printers obtain the final object by superimposing a layer on top of another, along a unique direction. A robot arm has been used to experiment with deposition on differently oriented planes in order to build features that can act as reinforcement, customize existing builds, reconstruct damaged parts and remove the necessity for wasteful extrusions to generate supports. The initial steps from the design of the system to the preliminary experimental results will be addressed.