The impact of the G-code flavour selection in FFF

Abstract

Fused Filament Fabrication has become one of the most popular additive manufacturing technologies due to many hardware options and materials at affordable prices. A reason for its success is the open-source status of the technology. This allowed both professionals and amateurs to contribute to the development of material extrusion technology. Furthermore, a wide range of available equipment brought slicing software developers to improve the user experience by expanding the equipment library and making the interface user-friendly and intuitive. In order to successfully print a part, the printer's firmware must interpret a compatible G-code file generated by a slicer. For this reason, each slicing software has multiple G-code flavours available to match the equipment. This paper aimed to evaluate the influence of all G-code flavours available in Cura slicing software by using a benchmark model. The evaluation refers to the resulting models' G-code characteristics analysis and print quality. The results show that the printed models' quality depends on G-code flavour and equipment.