Reconstruction strategies for additive manufacturing: from Gcode to finite element analysis

Additive manufacturing is an innovative technology that allows to build complex shape structures and components. With the development of new technology and materials, in these last years there was a big expansion in the aerospace field. However, the 3D printing, due to the layer-by-layer process, can create different infill geometries and anisotropic properties. The mechanical properties are vital for understanding the performance of 3D printed material and need to be further studied. To study properly the new materials behaviour is necessary before to understand the operational mode of the 3D printer and then, by a reverse engineering model, reconstruct the 3D printed model. The reconstruction is performed firstly analysing the machine code (Gcode) of the printer and extracting all the coordinates. Then these coordinates have been fed to different code in different softwares to reproduce virtually the printed layers. The used codes are able to recreate a solid geometric representation of the layer that can be exported into a STEP file and therefore can be imported into a finite element analysis software. Lasty, the imported files are meshed and analysed to predict how different specimen printed with different orientation and infill can support under different load conditions without the necessity characterize in advance the material properties.