Design and Fabrication of Tool Change Multi-nozzle FDM 3D Printer

To cater to the transition from single-color to multicolor/multi-material printing, this paper proposes a cartridge-replacing type multi-nozzle Fused Depositon Modeling(FDM) three-dimensional (3D) printer. In the test printing run, tool change failure/wobble/layer shift occurred. It was confirmed that improper support was the cause of this tool change failure. As a solution, spline and electromagnetic cartridges were designed. Wobble was caused by machine vibration and the motor stepping out. To minimize wobble, an additional Z-axis was installed, and the four-point bed leveling method was used instead of the three-point bed leveling method. The occurrence of layer shift was ascribed to the eccentricity of the Z-axis lead screw. Therefore, slit coupler was replaced with an Oldham type. In addition to the mechanical supplementation, the control environment was integrated to prevent accidents and signal errors due to wire connections. Before the final test printing run, a rectifier circuit was added to the motor to secure precise control stability. The final test printing run confirmed that the wobble/layer shift phenomenon was minimized, and the maximum error between layers was reduced to 0.05.