LESSON 3.1 · 2:13 · CHAPTER 3 · THE BEAD
Volume conservation on wheels
Flow = bead width × layer height × head speed; if the head slows and the flow doesn't, the bead gets wider.
Predict · at 0:41 in the video
One maker's standard bead is 21.1 by 5.1 millimetres, and its extruder pushes 91 kilograms an hour of carbon fibre ABS. How fast must the gantry move?
About 205 millimetres a second. 91 kilograms an hour is about 22,100 cubic millimetres a second. Divide by the bead's 107 square millimetres.
Further reading
This course is our own. These books go deeper.
- The economics of Big Area Additive Manufacturing, Post et al., Solid Freeform Fabrication Symposium, 2016
- Additively manufactured carbon fibre-reinforced composites: state of the art and perspective, van de Werken et al., Composites Part A, 2020
About the numbers
Simulations in this lesson are our own. Where a number rests on an assumption or a single source, the video marks it with an asterisk and says where it comes from.
Up next · 3.2 · 2:04Resolution costs squared