The temperature of the surrounding medium has a significant impact on the process of 3D printing polymer materials. Most 3D printers do not allow for the adjustment and control of the surrounding medium’s temperature, which usually matches the ambient room temperature in which the printer operates. In certain cases, maintaining a different
surrounding medium temperature during the 3D printing process can improve print quality. In this thesis, we designed and built a thermal chamber intended for control of the ambient air temperature during the 3D printing of polymer materials. The chamber is used to test the impact of different control algorithms on the temperature response within the chamber. We tested five different control algorithms and made a comparison. We found that simpler algorithms (such as On-Off control) reached the reference temperature in a shorter time. However, more sophisticated algorithms (such as PID control) better maintained the temperature when the error between the actual and target temperature was small.
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