A Comparative Study of Cartesian and Delta 3D Printers on Producing PLA Parts

The additive manufacturing processes emerged at the end of the last century and became popular by low-cost 3D printers. The most used printers work on a cartesian configuration, but recently were launched delta machines. These 3D printers use a more complex control system due to their trajectories generation but may present some advantages over the cartesian configuration. To increase the knowledge about additive manufacturing, a comparative study with cartesian and delta printers was performed to evaluate the performance on printing a testing part. Three samples were produced in each printer and compared based on surface quality, manufacturing time, mass and dimensional measurement. The printed objects were 3D scanned for comparing the digitized geometry by aligning the point cloud generated to its virtual 3D model. The parts produced in delta printer obtained better surface quality, while cartesian printer provided better dimensional accuracy. The results also showed that the variation of the mass and time to produce the parts were not significant.

增材制造（Additive Manufacturing）技术于上世纪末问世，并凭借低成本3D打印机得以普及。当前应用最为广泛的3D打印机采用笛卡尔构型（Cartesian Configuration），而近期陆续推出了Delta型机型。这类3D打印机因轨迹生成逻辑更为复杂，需搭载更复杂的控制系统，但相较笛卡尔构型机型仍具备一定技术优势。为深化增材制造领域的技术认知，本研究开展了笛卡尔构型与Delta型3D打印机的对比实验，以评估二者打印测试件的综合性能。每类打印机均制备3组打印试样，并从表面质量、打印时长、工件质量及尺寸精度四个维度展开对比分析。对打印完成的工件进行3D扫描，通过将生成的点云（Point Cloud）与工件的虚拟3D模型进行配准，以对比二者的数字化几何形态。实验结果表明，Delta型打印机打印的工件表面质量更优，而笛卡尔构型打印机的尺寸精度更高。此外，研究结果还显示，两类打印机的工件质量与打印时长的偏差均不显著。