Experimental Derivation of the Thermal Coefficients and Performance Observations of Heated Platforms in 3D Printing

Rapid prototyping and additive manufacturing through 3D printing has significantly impacted business, industrial, and research activities as a rapidly emerging technology whose significance continues to grow. This new technology has been shown to lower the manufacturing costs in a wide array of applications that range in diversity from manufacturing nuclear power plant components to multi materials, and fabricating tissues and organs for human bodies to carbon fiber reinforced parts at unprecedented rates for private jets [1]. The investigation of several heated platforms under operating conditions forms the basis for this paper from which the thermal coefficients of each product are experimentally derived. From this testing and derivation, intriguing observations regarding each platforms performance is presented.