29th International Conference on Flexible Automation and Intelligent Manufacturing, FAIM 2019, Limerick, İrlanda, 24 - 28 Haziran 2019, cilt.38, ss.792-799
© 2019 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/)Additive Manufacturing (AM) facilitates the production of intricate objects despite its weakness in attainable part quality and fabrication speed compared to the conventional manufacturing methods. To alleviate the problems arising as a natural outcome of AM methods, hybrid technologies become viable options by employing concurrent manufacturing procedures, e.g. synergetic additive and subtractive manufacturing (SM) actions. Hybrid workstations have recently opened up new dimensions to 3D-printing industry, but related research topics remain underexplored in the literature. In this study, a hybrid manufacturing simulator that imitates AM and SM operations is presented. The hybrid simulator reported aims to provide users with a comprehensive interpretation of the G-codes, thereby previews the AM/SM tool paths and the eventual shape of the fabricated object. Consequently, the simulator lets users realize the final form of the artifacts besides enabling them to notice possible problems on the manufacturing trajectories. In addition, a post-processor customized for multi-axis hybrid platforms is built for the generation of G-code files. As a significant feature of the proposed manufacturing simulator, the capability to handle variable bead-width on the additive infill path has also been addressed in the study.