Feature-based Adaptive Process Planning in Material Extrusion

This thesis introduces a novel feature-based process planning framework for Material Extrusion (ME). ME, also known as FDM or FFF, is a common type of Additive Manufacturing that works by melting and extruding thermoplastics. ME offers many modifiable manufacturing parameters that can affect various areas of part performance. Feature-based process planning methods can locally modify and apply manufacturing parameters to avoid conflicts and compromises. Compared to existing methods, the proposed framework offers the ability to share and reuse feature data with a standardised method for dividing parts into features, fully parameterised features with simple geometry, and a feature database.