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New model for shrinkage compensation in selective laser sintering

K. Senthilkumarana; Pulak M. Pandeya; P. V. M. Raoa a Department of Mechanical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, New Delhi, India

To cite this Article Senthilkumaran, K. , Pandey, Pulak M. and Rao, P. V. M.(2009) 'New model for shrinkage compensation

in selective laser sintering', Virtual and Physical Prototyping, 4: 2, 49 62 To link to this Article: DOI: 10.1080/17452750802393659 URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17452750802393659

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Virtual and Physical Prototyping, Vol. 4, No. 2, June 2009, 4962

New model for shrinkage compensation in selective laser sintering

K. Senthilkumaran, Pulak M. Pandey* and P. V. M. Rao
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, New Delhi, India
(Received 9 May 2008; in nal form 5 August 2008)

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This paper presents a new model for shrinkage and a new approach for shrinkage compensation to enhance the accuracy of parts produced by selective laser sintering (SLS) a solid freeform fabrication process. The present prevailing approach as proposed by machine manufacturers is simple but not accurate. A new shrinkage model which accounts for part geometry as well as beam offset is proposed in this work. A new compensation scheme which accounts for nonlinear shrinkage is proposed, implemented and validated. The proposed compensation scheme compensates for shrinkage at every layer and at every hatch length, unlike a uniform compensation scheme applied to entire part. A new algorithm which accounts for this is developed and implemented. Experiments carried out with the new shrinkage model as well as with the new compensation scheme have shown significant improvement in the accuracy of the parts produced which establishes the effectiveness of the proposed methodology. Keywords: rapid prototyping; selective laser sintering; shrinkage compensation; beam offset; scan length

Notation
a DCAD DCSM DLSM Ia L Lc Lm Ls LX LY s SX SY SZ Dc Dl Beam offset for hatch line (mm) Desired dimension of CAD model (mm) Dimensions obtained using machine manufacturer suggested shrinkage compensation factor (mm) Dimensions obtained using shrinkage models (mm) Percentage improvement in accuracy (%) Compensated length (mm) Original Hatch length (mm) Measured length (mm) Actual sintered length (mm) Hatch length along X direction Hatch length along Y direction Percentage shrinkage (%) Shrinkage in X direction (%) Shrinkage in Y direction (%) Shrinkage in Z direction (%) Compensation length (mm) Deviation from nominal dimension (mm)

1. Introduction Selective laser sintering (SLS) is one among many different rapid prototyping (RP) processes where the parts are built in a layer by layer fashion. Recently, SLS has gained importance due to its ability to process a wide variety of materials. SLS can produce functional prototypes and rapid tooling components, which necessitates the production of high-quality parts. The majority of its applications are in aerospace and rapid tooling, where high accuracy levels have to be met in order to ensure proper functional requirement. Due to this new constraint imposed on SLS in terms of part quality, there is a need to study the process in detail and to improve part accuracies. Among all types of process-related errors, the effects caused by shrinkage are found to have major influence on the accuracy of parts produced. Materials exhibit shrinkage during thermal cycles, which varies from material to material. The shrinkage of crystalline polymer is found to

*Corresponding author. Email: pmpandey@mech.iitd.ac.in

Virtual and Physical Prototyping ISSN 1745-2759 print/ISSN 1745-2767 online # 2009 Taylor & Francis http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals DOI: 10.1080/17452750802393659

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be higher than that of amorphous polymers (Venuvinod and Ma 2004). The SLS process is always accompanied by shrinkage as a result of thermal and phase change effects. In practice, the shrinkage is experimentally calibrated and the same is compensated during data preparation stage of rapid prototyping. The purpose of compensation seems to be that of reducing the inaccuracies due to shrinkage and not to attempt to eliminate those (Yang et al. 2002). However, notwithstanding the complexity of shrinkage, the basic approach used today in most of the RP processes involves some form of simple shrinkage compensation. Before making the part, users are allowed to set a constant shrinkage compensation factor, which is different for different direction to overcome the shrinkage effect (Tong et al. 2003). The shrinkage compensation factor is found by fabricating standard test specimens and deriving a linear relationship between the nominal dimensions and fabricated part dimensions. Here when dealing with shrinkage compensation, a fundamental assumption usually made is that shrinkage is orthotropic and the shrinkage compensation scaling factors are constant for all X, Y and Z dimensions. However, this constant scaling factor is not realistic because of the dynamic nature of the SLS process and varying layer geometry in part building. Therefore in this paper it is proposed to compensate nonuniform shrinkage in sliced layer files rather than compensating the STL files. Jacobs (2000) discussed the effects of shrinkage variation on the accuracy of rapid tooling inserts. He found that a noise component is present along with mean percentage shrinkage for most of the RP processes, and termed it as random noise shrinkage. He mainly concentrated on random noise shrinkage and found that standard deviation of the random shrinkage is directly proportional to the mean process shrinkage. He also found that nonuniformity in shrinkage is mainly attributed to geometry of the part. He concluded that key to accuracy and repeatability of such techniques is the reduction of mean process shrinkage to the smallest possible level. Zhu et al. (2006) studied the shrinkage behavior in metal powders. They quantified the two shrinkages namely thermal shrinkage and sintering shrinkage. They found that in-plane shrinkage (X and Y shrinkage) is very small compared to shrinkage in the build direction. The sintering shrinkage was mainly caused by densification and is a kind of elastic compressive shortening. They suggested that thermal shrinkage due to cyclic heating can be reduced by controlling process parameters. In their work, the thermal shrinkage increases with increase in laser power and shrinkage decreases with increase in scan speed and scan spacing. Ning et al. (2006) considered the effect of geometry on the shrinkage of the metallic parts. They introduced the speed compensation technique based on the scan length. In

their method, when building a part, the laser scan speed is adjusted dynamically according to the scan length which varies with geometric shape of the part. The different scan speeds for the scan lengths are chosen based on their shrinkage values at different speeds. Wang (1999) discussed the issues in calibration of shrinkage and beam offset for the SLS process. Expressions for shrinkage and beam offset in terms of the nominal diameter and error after sintering were developed. They also discussed the effect of part weight on the percentage shrinkage. Manetsberger et al. (2003) studied the effect of temperature, time and pressure on the shrinkage of polymer parts. They used a thermal simulation as a basis for shrinkage compensation in SLS process. They expressed shrinkage values as a function of temperature and also showed a linear dependency to the pressure applied. Yang et al. (2002) proposed compensation test pieces for the X, Y and Z axes to compensate for the shape distortions caused by phase changes during the sintering process and they measured shrinkage rates experimentally. With those shrinkage rates, a set of equations is proposed which gives the scale factors of the X, Y and Z axes. The scale factors obtained from the compensation test pieces of X, Y and Z axes satisfy the required dimensional accuracy even if there are changes in the build positions and in the size of the SLS parts. Their work is mainly focused on the study of the location of the part on the part bed and does not aim at shrinkage variation with process parameters. Ning et al. (2005) conducted a series of experiments for the direct metal laser sintering (DMLS) process to find the effect of hatch length on the material anisotropy, heterogeneity and part strength. They concluded that short hatch lines cause serious shrinkage and the part becomes less homogeneous. They proposed an algorithm to find out optimal hatch direction for a typical layer by considering the shrinkage as a function of hatch length. Ragunath and Pandey (2007) studied the effect of process parameters on the process and material shrinkage. They found that scan length influences shrinkage in the X direction. They also predicted that scaling factors can have a linear relationship with scan length (Figure 1). They derived empirical relations for percentage shrinkage in terms of scan length using Taguchi method. However they used scaling factors based on the maximum dimensions not on the individual scan lengths. Several attempts have been made to improve the accuracy of RP parts made by other processes like stereolithography and fused deposition modeling (FDM) by controlling the effect of shrinkage. Dao et al. (1999) calculated shrinkage compensation factors for FDM parts with varying lengths. They observed that mean error after shrinkage compensation follows a linear trend and is increasing for increasing nominal dimensions. Also the residual errors are found to be scattered due to lack of process stability. They attributed this trend to the noise shrinkage which is not compensated

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1

51

0.8 Percentage Shrinkage (%)

s X = 1.0302 0.009647 Lc

0.6

0.4

shrinkage. During processing the powder particles fuse together to produce dense parts, leading to a decrease in porosity and volume. During heating, the part expands due to the co-efficient of thermal expansion and then shrinks during cooling. Shrinkage is strongly influenced by the laser parameters, powder bed properties, cooling rate and geometry. Therefore the total shrinkage b (Shi et al. 2004) is expressed as a sum of three shrinkages. b  bt  bs  bc (1)

0.2

0 20

30

40 50 60 Scan length in mm

70

80

Figure 1. Scan length and percentage shrinkage relation (Ragunath and Pandey 2007). by the scaling factors used. Wang et al. (1996) investigated the relationship between post-cure shrinkage and the various process parameters for stereolithography by using least-square method. They concluded that, as the curing degree of the green-state prototype increases, the shrinkage encountered reduces. They also found that the curing degree is a function of laser power, layer pitch, scan pitch and scanning speed. Wenbin et al. (2005) presented finite element simulation for stair stepping effect caused by material shrinkage in a new process called step less rapid prototyping which combines stereolithography and conventional milling. They reported that the layers had a small initial expansion before a large shrinkage. They concluded that the light intensity does not have significant effect on staircase control. The decrease in layer thickness affects the stair stepping significantly. It is evident from the literature review presented above that part accuracy is affected highly by shrinkage. Some studies (Manetsberger et al. 2003, Wenbin et al. 2005) use simulation as a basis for shrinkage compensation. However due to the dynamic nature of the process, a realistic simulation of shrinkage occurring in the process using FEM is often difficult. In most of these approaches which use standard test specimen, the assumption is that shrinkage is constant. Two important research issues identified are nonuniform shrinkage along every Y direction and its dependency on geometry and these two are not explicitly studied in any previous works.

where bt is the thermal shrinkage, bs is the sintering shrinkage and bc is the crystalline shrinkage. The linear thermal shrinkage bt (Zhu et al. 2006) can be written in terms of the process parameters.   AP 1 L (2) bt  a Vh rcp Lt where a is the thermal expansion co-efficient, A is absorbtivity of the powder bed, P is the laser power, V is the velocity of the laser beam, h is the hatch spacing, r is the density of the powder bed, cp is the specific heat capacity of the powder material, Lt is the layer thickness and L is the original scan length. The crystalline shrinkage occurring during cooling can be highly nonuniform along each direction due to strong temperature gradient inside the powder bed. There can be expansion-shrinkage behavior during the time history of sintering. A particular layer can shrink nonuniformly due to its position, i.e., high or low temperature regions. In order to understand the effect of geometry on shrinkage in SLS process, a brief introduction to the compensation procedure in injection molding process is essential. In injection molding process, different wall thicknesses of the part produces different shrinkage. When wall thickness increases, more time is required to cool the centre of the thicker wall. As polyamide cools more slowly, there is more time for crystallisation and stress relaxation leading to higher crystallisation and higher shrinkage (Jansen et al. 1998). The shrinkage values are specified either as a normalised value (mm/mm) or as percentage values to the original part dimensions. Different percentage shrinkage values are specified for different wall thicknesses for a polyamide material. ASTM D955-00 is an American standard for measurement of shrinkage in molded plastics which specifies that shrinkage values differ in directions along the flow to the direction across the flow and it should be measured separately for semi-crystalline materials like polyamide (Fisher 2003). It is interesting to note that the shrinkage factor is not a constant value but it varies according to the geometry in many similar processes. Moreover, there is a directional effect considering the direction in which laser scanning takes place and the direction perpendicular to it. In this work, an attempt is made to study the effect of geometry i.e.

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2. Nonuniform shrinkage The total shrinkage in the SLS process is due to material shrinkage, process shrinkage and thermal shrinkage. During polymer crystallisation, the molecules arrange themselves and occupy less volume thus leading to material

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Figure 2. Some shrinkage calibration parts found in the literature: (a) part used by Wang (1999); (b) part used by Yang et al. (2002); (c) part used in EOS method (EOS 2003); (d) part used in DTM method (Pham and Dimov 2001).
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hatch length on shrinkage in the direction of the laser scanning and in a direction orthogonal to scan direction. 3. Development of shrinkage model The details of the experimentation for developing a new shrinkage model are discussed in next section. As a shrinkage model relating hatch length and percentage shrinkage needs to be developed, the shrinkage calibration part should contain strips of different length to capture the effect of scan length. Figure 2 shows some of the common geometries used by researchers and RP machine manufacturers for in-plane shrinkage calibration. In order to accommodate longer dimensions than older shrinkage models a shrinkage calibration part with large variations in scan length as shown in Figure 3 is designed. Moreover, two shrinkage models are developed by considering the direction of scanning. The first model is developed for the shrinkage along the scanning direction (X direction) and the other across the scanning direction (Y direction). The length of the strips in shrinkage calibration part varies from 20 to 200 mm. In order to develop models for shrinkage in the X and Y direction, two parts were fabricated in each case to check the repeatability in each direction. Specimens used in the study were fabricated using PA2200 which is a modified nylon 12 developed for use in SLS machines by EOS GmbH, Germany. The material is semi-crystalline in nature. The material used was refreshed powder and the ratio of mixing is 70% used powder and 30% virgin powder. The schematic of the equipment used is shown in Figure 4. It uses a combination of two bins and a slot feeder to dispense powder onto the platform. Extra

powder is collected through two bins situated on both sides of the removal chamber. Moreover the environment maintained in the study includes the processing chamber and the removal chamber. Nitrogen purging is done and infra red heat radiators maintain the required temperature of both environments. All the parts are oriented and placed at the centre of the platform for building. Maximum power available with CO2 laser in the SLS machine used for the study is 58 W. Only 62% (36 W) of the maximum power is used in the present experiment. This is mainly due to the fact that curling is observed at higher laser powers. A maximum scan speed of 4500 mm/s is chosen for minimum build time. The laser spot size is kept around 0.6 mm. The energy density used in the experiment is 26.66 KW/m2. The process parameters used for contour are low laser power and scan speed compared to hatching in order to achieve a good surface finish. If the part is not allowed to cool in a controlled environment for long time, the part tend to warp due to faster cooling in the outside environment. During faster cooling significant stresses develop causing post-build warpage. So the part is allowed to cool inside the platform for five hours. There are four types of exposure strategy available with the current SLS equipment used for the study. The scanning lines are generated and exposed (1) along X direction only, (2) along Y direction only, (3) exposure along both X and Y direction and (4) along X direction in one layer and along Y in next layer (parallel to X and Y on alternate layers). The exposure strategy used in the present study has scan lines only along X direction (type 1). There are considerations in fabricating shrinkage calibration parts using different process parameters for contour

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Figure 3. Shrinkage calibration specimen: (a) design (b) length of strips (c) arrangement in platform and (d) fabricated specimen. lines and hatch lines (Figure 5). Mostly the contour lines are scanned with a low laser power and high beam speed as compared to the hatch lines. For the present experiments, the contouring option is switched off to accurately capture the shrinkage behavior of the hatch lines. The diameter of the sintered zone is usually larger than the laser diameter and is called as spot diameter. In order to compensate the dimensional error due to spot diameter, the laser beam should be offset from the boundaries of the cross section of the object and is called beam offset. The estimation of these beam offset values for the SLS process is described in Wang (1999). In the present work, in order to estimate the beam offset for the hatch lines, a part is designed with dimensions 25 0.6 6 mm. The dimensions of this part are chosen such that when fabricated, this part will have single line exposure of laser beam. The design, arrangement and fabricated specimen are shown in Figure 6. The process parameters used for this experiment is listed in Table 1. The thickness of the single hatch line part is measured and its value is found to be 0.555 mm. No beam compensation is applied while fabricating specimens. It is incorporated while calculating percentage shrinkage.

Figure 4. Schematic of the SLS process.

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Figure 5. Exposure strategy showing contouring and hatching (type 4). The percentage shrinkage is calculated from the following relation: s Lc  a  Lm Lc  a  100 (3) each direction. The orientation of the specimen and the results of these experiments are presented in Figure 7. Percentage shrinkage increases with nominal dimensions for strip lengths between 20 to 160 mm and becomes constant after 170 mm. Also significant amount of expansion rather shrinkage is found between strip lengths 20 to 110 mm. As discussed earlier, there is a shrinkage-expansion behavior during time-history of sintering. Between the strip lengths 20 to 110 mm, the expansion dominates the shrinkage. This expansion or increase in dimension is attributed to the fact that sintering is unconstrained. In most of the SLS systems, the laser scans the top surface of a heated powder bed to form the area enclosed by contours of the layered object in raster scan mode (hatching) in combination with the outlining of the cross sections of the part in vector scan

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where Lm is the measured dimension of the part after sintering and cooling and a is the beam offset. The exposure strategy used for shrinkage calibration experiments is type 1. The process parameters used for this experiment are given in Table 1. The dimensions of the strips in calibration specimen are measured and the percentage shrinkage is calculated using equation (3). The percentage shrinkage is plotted against nominal dimensions of the strips. The results showed good repeatability of the shrinkage pattern between the two specimens fabricated in

Figure 6. Beam offset calibration parts (a) single line exposure (b) design (c) arrangement and (d) fabricated specimens.

Virtual and Physical Prototyping Table 1. Process parameters set for the experiments.
Parameter Laser power (W) Hatch spacing (mm) Scan speed (mm/s) Part bed temperature (oC) Hatching Value 36 0.3 4500 176 Parallel to X

55

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mode (contouring). In hatching, the laser scans across the powder surface in one dimension, turning the laser on and off at the boundaries of the contour. The complete length of laser scan in one dimension is dependent upon of the size and shape of contours dictated by part geometry. As the exposure strategy used for experimentation had only hatching lines and no contour lines, the expansion during sintering is not constrained by the contour lines as shown in Figure 8. A more detailed hypothetical explanation for this in-plane expansion is dealt by Zhu et al. (2006). Moreover, the pattern of shrinkage obtained shows that the percentage shrinkage is lower for lower scan lengths and higher for higher scan lengths unlike the pattern obtained in literature (Ning et al. 2005, 2006, Jacobs 2000). This reversal of trend is mainly due to the fact that lower strip length receives less energy in the present experiments compared to works reported in literature. The length of scan during which acceleration and deceleration of galvano mirrors takes place, while the laser takes turn at the

boundaries, is compensated in the present work and the laser is switched off while scanning these lengths and hence no exposure. This length of unexposed compensated region is independent of part size, shape and location. This method produces less energy in smaller strip lengths unlike the earlier approaches and produce less densification and shrinkage. In addition, the scans are incremented in a manner such that the present scan overlaps the previous scan to obtain structural integrity of the part. Accordingly, the time between adjacent and overlapping scans of the two hatch lengths will widely vary according to the different lengths of scan. Such variation in this time is the prime cause for greater temperature deviation, inconsistent sintering rates leading to nonuniform shrinkage. Also larger length of scan will have enough time for sintering to happen and produce more shrinkage. In order to compensate this nonuniform shrinkage, a shrinkage model is developed relating percentage shrinkage and length of scan along the X direction. Figure 9 shows the shrinkage pattern for calibration specimens oriented along the Y direction of the platform. It is to be remembered that this pattern is obtained with parts where the scanning direction is still parallel to the X direction and only the variation in length of strips is in Y direction. The percentage shrinkage increases with increase in strip length until the strip length is 110 mm and then starts to decrease with increase in strip length. Unlike the trend in the X direction, there is no expansion which is

Figure 7. (a) Orientation of specimen; (b) percentage shrinkage versus strip length along X direction.

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Constrained sintering with contouring and hatching

Unconstrained sintering without contour exposure

Figure 8. Expansion in X direction owing to exposure strategy found in the specimens. As the first scan line itself acts as a barrier to expansion during sintering along the positive Y direction, the sintering is usually partially constrained in the Y direction of the platform while scanning direction is parallel to the X direction. More crystalline structures are formed when the material is kept longer in the temperature range of 140 to 160oC. The shrinkage of the material will be higher if the material is undergoing a slow cooling in this temperature range. Moreover, as the width of the specimen is small, the time interval between two consecutive scan

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lines is not sufficiently long for the surface to cool down; the temperature in the region will gradually build up, resulting in higher temperature and longer liquid-phase time. This will cause greater gradients in temperature to the surrounding and a relatively faster cooling than the longer length strips (Ning et al. 2006). Therefore the material shrinkage is lesser for smaller strip lengths as the part cools rapidly allowing minimum time to form the crystalline structures. The magnitude of shrinkage in the X and Y directions is less compared to shrinkage along the build direction (Z direction). Apart from that, the process parameters that affect the in-plane shrinkage does not affect the Z direction shrinkage. For example, the effect of scan length on the Z shrinkage is negligible (Ragunath et al. 2006). In addition to that nonuniformities in shrinkage in the Z direction depends upon the placement of the part in the build chamber, i.e. a part placed at the bottom of the platform will have more shrinkage than the same part placed at the top of the build chamber due to the weight of the powder acting upon it. It is observed from the authors previous studies that part bed temperature, and scan spacing mostly influence the Z shrinkage (Ragunath and Pandey 2007). So in this study shrinkage models are developed for X and Y directions only and for compensating Z direction shrinkage a constant shrinkage factor is calculated using the method suggested by the machine manufacturer (SZ 3.5%).

Figure 9. (a) Orientation of specimen; (b) percentage shrinkage versus strip length along Y direction

Virtual and Physical Prototyping

0.6 0.4

57

Percentage shrinkage (%)

0.2 0 -0.2 -0.4 -0.6 -0.8 -1 -1.2 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160 180 200

Negative shrinkage
X direction Y direction

For fitting a model, to the percentage shrinkage as a function of scan length, the data from the experiment conducted using a specimen shown in Figure 3 with parameters listed in Table 1 is used. A model is fit between percentage shrinkage and scan length in both the X and Y directions using curve fitting toolbox in MATLAB. The fitted shrinkage model for X and Y directions (SX and SY in%) are given below SX  0:2924  28:5 LX (4) (5)

Strip length (mm)

SY 3:12  105 L2 Y  0:007271LY  0:09478

Figure 10. Comparison of shrinkage model in X and Y direction.

Figure 10 shows the fitted curves for the shrinkage in X and Y direction. The coefficient of determination (Montgomery

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Figure 11. Illustration of new compensation method: (a) STL le; (b) slicing; (c) contour showing hatch lines; (d) offsetting hatch lines based on shrinkage model; (e) comparison of original and nal compensated geometry.

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200 180 160 140 120 100 80 60 40 20 0 X -20 -20 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160 Y Original geometry Compensated geometry

K. Senthilkumaran et al.

180

200

Figure 12. Comparison of geometry before and after compensation using the developed shrinkage model. and Runger 2007) for the fitted shrinkage model in the X and Y direction are 98.67% and 81.67% respectively.

4. Proposed compensation procedure When the shrinkage scaling factors are constant, shrinkage compensation is relatively easy. The scaling transformation can be used to offset the vertices of the triangles of the STL file to the single scaling factor value in each X, Y and Z direction. However if the shrinkage scaling factors vary with hatch length, shrinkage compensation requires offsetting each scan line of the part. Therefore a sliced layer file is preferred rather than a STL file for the ease of compensation. Compensating on sliced data is proved successful by Tong et al. (2008) for compensating machine errors for SLA and FDM processes. In order to achieve this, the STL file of the part is sliced into layers and is stored in a layered file format called CLI file. In order to generate the scan lengths, entire scan path of the laser has to be calculated. The contour information is extracted and all the co-ordinate points of the contour are sorted based on whether the contour is internal or external contour. After reading the contour information hatch lines and its lengths are found using intersection of hatch lines with the contours. Then compensation value for every hatch length is calculated using the fitted shrinkage models. Hatch lengths are compensated at its two ends. After offsetting each contour at its end points, the contour is rebuilt with its new vertices and a new compensated CLI file is written. Then this file is used for part building. Figure 11 illustrates this procedure with an example of a sphere. The STL file of the sphere (Figure 11(a)) is sliced with uniform slice thickness of 150 mm (Figure 11 (b)). Hatch vectors (dexels) are generated with a hatch gap of 300 mm for circular slice geometry (Figure 11(c)). The hatch

vectors along X direction corresponds to scan path of the laser and the hypothetical hatch vectors along Y direction are perpendicular to these scan lines. It should be remembered that there is no exposure on these hatch lines along the Y direction and these are virtual hatch lines generated for the purpose of the compensation. Most of the degenerated cases in calculating intersections of hatch vector with contour geometry are solved with the help of odd/even parity checking. The generated hatch vectors are compensated depending upon their hatch length. When a dexel with length Lc is fabricated, due to linear shrinkage, the dexel length reduces to Lm. The deviation due to shrinkage of original length Lc is Dl. From Figure 11(d), it is observed that in order to obtain a length Lc a dexel with length L has to be used. Thus the sLc is the compensated value is L LcDc, where Dc  1s compensation length to be added to every dexel of the part. For a part having scan length Lc, Dc is calculated using the shrinkage model and appended at the two ends of the dexel by the amount Dc/2. First, the dexels in the X direction are compensated using shrinkage model (SX) developed in the X direction (equation (4)). Then compensated contour is reconstructed from the end points of the hatch vectors. Following this dexels in Y direction for this new compensated contour are generated and compensated using shrinkage model (SY) developed for the Y direction (equation (5)) and then compensated contour is reconstructed from the end points of the hatch vectors. The comparison of original and compensated contour is illustrated in Figure 11(e). All the compensated contours are then written into a CLI file for fabricating the slices. Unlike the conventional compensation techniques, the compensation length varies nonlinearly with the original hatch length. As percentage shrinkage is a function of hatch length and during compensation it is again multiplied by the hatch length, the amount of compensated length varies nonlinearly with hatch length. Figure 12 compares the original and compensated geometry for a semi-circular section with a magnification in compensation length. The implementation of this compensation methodology for X direction is illustrated in the form of a flow chart in Figure 13. The same procedure is repeated for the compensation in the Y direction. This new method of compensation can be used for any four types of exposures mentioned earlier in section 3. But for each type of exposure new shrinkage models need to be developed following the steps outlined in section 3.

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5. Results and discussion The shrinkage compensation algorithm and the developed shrinkage models are verified by conducting experiments. Improvement in accuracy is quantified by fabricating parts following two different compensation methods:

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Start Input CLI file Read layers, contours, vertices and their attribute

59

Initialise first layer & contour

Find the max and min values of x & y for each contour

Sort contour vertices in anti-clockwise direction Generate Hatch lines Increment contour_no Find Intersection points of hatch lines with contours Increment layer_no If contour_no<nc

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Sort the intersection points in ascending order of X co-ordinates

Generate scan lines from the intersection points

Offset scanline by c Increment hatchline Write new contour data from compensated scan line

IF hatchline >H

If layer_no < layers

Output compensated CLI file

Stop

Figure 13. Implementation of compensation procedure. . The first part is compensated by applying a scaling transformation to STL file with a constant shrinkage scaling factor (calculated using method suggested by SLS machine manufacturer (EOS 2003)). . and the other part is compensated using the shrinkage model and new compensation method The improvement in accuracy for the model developed in this work for both the X and Y direction is studied using a standard benchmark part as suggested by Ippolito et al. (1995). A comparison experiment is conducted to quantify the improvement in accuracy due to the inclusion of the nonuniform shrinkage term. In one part a machine

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Table 2. Process parameters for Benchmark part comparison.

Parameters Laser power (W) Beam speed (mm/s) Hatch spacing (mm) Part bed temp (oC) Shrinkage model 36 4500 0.3 176 Machine manufacturer suggested compensation 36 4500 0.3 176

Shrinkage along X (%)

SX 0:2924

28:5 LC

0.43

Shrinkage along Y (%)

/

Shrinkage along Z (%) Exposure

/SY  3:12105 L2 C 0:007271LC 0:09478 3.5 Parallel to X only

0.5 3.5 Parallel to X only

manufacturer suggested scaling factor is used (s constant) and in another part the shrinkage model developed in this work is used (s f(Lc)). For both parts, process parameters are kept constant. The process parameters used are tabulated in Table 2 Typical dimensions of the parts (shown in Figure 14) are measured and compared with the desired (CAD model) dimensions. Compensating shrinkage along the Z direction for both parts is done using constant scaling factors in the present work and these factors are arrived after repeated calibration studies. As this paper deals with in-plane shrinkage compensation, this new compensation method is not used for Z direction compensation and hence no dimensions along the Z direction of the benchmark part is considered for evaluating the effectiveness of the compensation method and shrinkage model. The comparison of dimensions of the parts with CAD model dimensions for X

Figure 14. Comparison benchmark part. and Y direction are given in Tables 3 and 4. The percentage of improvement in accuracy (I a) of the parts can be defined by equation (6)   jD  DLSM j Ia  1  CAD  100 jDCAD  DCSM j (6)

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where DCAD is dimension desired by CAD model, DLSM is dimension obtained by use of shrinkage models and DCSM is dimension obtained when using machine manufacturer suggested shrinkage factors. Figure 15 depicts the absolute deviations of all dimensions and it can be observed that the part produced using the shrinkage model is more accurate than the part compensated using machine manufacturer

Table 3. Percentage improvement of accuracy in X direction dimensions.

Absolute deviations (mm) Machine manufacturer suggested compensation 0.455 0.3 0.44 0.315 0.38 0.525 0.41 0.37 0.39 0.36 0.38 0.21 0.4 0.37 0.42 0.435 0.525 Percentage of improvement in accuracy (%) 69.23 86.67 92.05 50.79 19.74 91.43 43.9 37.84 21.79 0* 92.11 7.14 46.25 64.86 91.67 94.25 86.67

Dimensions A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q

Nominal dimension (mm) 120 61.5 61.5 66 30.23 30.23 66 66 30.23 30.23 66 61.5 61.5 120 12 12 120

X-direction shrinkage model 0.14 0.04 0.035 0.155 0.305 0.045 0.23 0.23 0.305 0.36 0.03 0.195 0.215 0.13 0.035 0.025 0.07

Virtual and Physical Prototyping Table 4. Percentage improvement of accuracy in Y direction dimensions.
Absolute deviations (mm) Dimensions Nominal Dimension (mm) Y-direction shrinkage model Machine manufacturer suggested compensation A? B? C? D? E? F? G? H? I? J? K? L? M? N? O? P? Q? 120 61.5 61.5 66 30.23 30.23 66 66 30.23 30.23 66 61.5 61.5 120 12 12 120 0.405 0.29 0.24 0.275 0.12 0.135 0.155 0.075 0.255 0.115 0.295 0.08 0.065 0.095 0.355 0.25 0.165 0.465 0.38 0.21 0.215 0.735 0.18 0.55 0.635 0.625 0.745 0.315 0.495 0.52 0.315 0.405 0.32 0.53

61

Percentage of improvement in accuracy (%) 12.9 23.68 0* 0* 83.67 25 71.82 88.19 59.2 84.56 6.35 83.84 87.5 69.84 12.35 21.88 68.87

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suggested method. The mean absolute deviation of the dimensions of the part compensated with shrinkage model is found to be less (X direction 0.15 mm, Y direction 0.19 mm) than that of the part compensated with constant scaling

factors (X direction 0.39 mm, Y direction 0.45). For some dimensions (J, C?, D? indicated by * in Table 3 and 4) for the benchmark part fabricated with shrinkage model do not show any improvement due to new shrinkage model due to

Figure 15. Comparison of absolute deviation for dimensions of benchmark part: (a) Dimension along X direction (b) dimensions along Y direction

62

K. Senthilkumaran et al.
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distortions found in the fabricated part. Average percentage improvement in accuracy of the shrinkage model together with the compensation algorithm over simple scaling with constant shrinkage compensation factor is found to be approximately 5562%.

6. Conclusions In the present work, an attempt has been made to develop a new shrinkage model and a new compensation scheme which overcomes limitations of the earlier system. A new compensation scheme which accounts for nonlinear shrinkage has been proposed and validated. The proposed compensation scheme compensates for shrinkage for individual hatch length, unlike a uniform compensation scheme applied to an entire part. An algorithm which accounts for this has been developed and implemented. Experiments carried out with new shrinkage model as well as with new compensation scheme have shown significant improvement in the accuracy of the parts produced which establishes the effectiveness of the proposed methodology. The present methodology of shrinkage compensation for improving part accuracy can be extended to higher dimensions as well as to other rapid prototyping processes. References
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