Filament geometrical model and nozzle trajectory analysis in the fused deposition modeling process

The geometrical model of the filament during the fused deposition modeling (FDM) process was firstly proposed based on three different models, tractrix, parabola, and catenary. Comparing with the actual measured filament curves on the Stratasys 1600 FDM machine, it is indicated that the tractrix model had the best agreement with the actual measured curves. With the analytical simulation, the nozzle trajectories in the straight-line deposition road, circle road, and arbitrary continuous curve road were deduced, according to the traxtric based geometrical model of the filament.