阅读说明：本技术 多喷头3d打印机 (Many shower nozzles 3D printer ) 是由 严铜 于 2018-07-11 设计创作，主要内容包括：本发明公开了一种多喷头3D打印机,解决当前FDM型3D打印机打印效率低、速度慢以及大尺寸打印机设计制造难度大的问题。包括多个喷头组件,每个喷头组件中包含多个可独立控制送丝的喷头,每个喷头组件均可在对应的XY轴运动机构的驱动下独立做XY方向运动。多个喷头组件均支持多材料打印,可以在支撑材料与模型材料之间自动切换,通过多个喷头组件并行打印,提升了打印机的打印效率,同时本发明采用固定式打印平台结构降低了大尺寸打印机设计加工难度。(The invention discloses a multi-nozzle 3D printer, which solves the problems of low printing efficiency, low speed and high design and manufacturing difficulty of a large-size printer of the conventional FDM type 3D printer. The wire feeding device comprises a plurality of spray head assemblies, each spray head assembly comprises a plurality of spray heads capable of independently controlling wire feeding, and each spray head assembly can independently move in the XY directions under the driving of a corresponding XY-axis movement mechanism. The multiple spray head assemblies support multi-material printing, automatic switching can be performed between a supporting material and a model material, printing efficiency of the printer is improved by the multiple spray head assemblies in parallel, and design and processing difficulty of the large-size printer is reduced by adopting a fixed printing platform structure.)

1. Many shower nozzles 3D printer, including moving mechanism, shower nozzle subassembly and print platform, its characterized in that, be equipped with N shower nozzle subassembly on the printer, N is greater than or equal to 2 and N is the integer, but contain K independent control send the shower nozzle of silk in the shower nozzle subassembly, K is greater than or equal to 2 and K is the integer, and every shower nozzle subassembly all can independently be XY direction motion under the drive of the XY axle moving mechanism that corresponds.

2. The multi-nozzle 3D printer of claim 1, wherein the nozzle assembly includes a nozzle switching mechanism.

3. The multi-nozzle 3D printer according to claim 1 or 2, wherein the nozzle assembly comprises 2 nozzles capable of independently controlling wire feeding.

4. The multi-nozzle 3D printer according to claim 1, further comprising a motion bracket, wherein the N nozzle assemblies and the corresponding XY axis motion mechanism are mounted on the motion bracket, the motion bracket can be driven by the Z axis motion mechanism to perform Z-direction motion, and the printing platform is fixed below the motion bracket.

5. The multi-nozzle 3D printer of claim 1, further comprising a thermal insulation cavity, wherein the printing platform is mounted inside the thermal insulation cavity.

6. The multi-nozzle 3D printer according to claim 5, wherein the moving mechanism is installed outside the thermal insulation cavity, the nozzle of each nozzle in the nozzle assembly extends into the thermal insulation cavity, and the wire extruding mechanism in the nozzle assembly is installed outside the thermal insulation cavity.

Technical Field

The invention belongs to the technical field of 3D printers, and particularly relates to a multi-nozzle 3D printer.

Background

The 3D printing technology is a fast forming technology, which is a technology for forming an object by using forming materials such as metal, plastic, photosensitive resin and the like in a layer-by-layer printing mode on the basis of a digital three-dimensional model file, and belongs to additive manufacturing. At present, a 3D printer based on Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM) principle has become a 3D printer with the highest popularity due to the advantages of simple structure, rich types of applicable materials, low cost of equipment and consumables and the like.

The FDM printer extrudes printing consumables into threads after melting, and the printing consumables are slowly stacked and deposited from points to lines to surfaces for forming, so that compared with a 3D printing technology of a surface forming process, the FDM printer has lower printing efficiency, and particularly when a model with a larger size is printed, tens of hours are often needed to complete the printing, thereby limiting the application of the FDM printer to the large-size printer. The current common method for improving the printing efficiency is to increase the thickness of a single layer, and the increase of the thickness of the layer leads to lower printing precision, so that the surface of the model becomes rough. Increasing the efficiency by simply increasing the layer thickness is therefore not an ideal option.

At present, a printer structure for improving printing efficiency by using multiple printing heads for parallel printing is provided, for example, the utility model patent with application number 201520670412.6 discloses a multi-nozzle 3D printer, which provides a 3D printer capable of realizing parallel printing, the printer adopts a plurality of nozzles capable of moving independently to realize a multi-nozzle parallel printing function, but the scheme has the following defects that firstly, only one nozzle and one wire feeding mechanism are arranged on each nozzle component, although the mode is simple in structure, the model and the support can only be printed by using the same material because of only one nozzle, so that the work of removing the support after printing is very troublesome, the defect is particularly obvious when large-size complex parts are printed, and if the model itself is carelessly damaged when the support is removed, the whole printed part is scrapped.

The second disadvantage is that the horizontal movement of the nozzle is only achieved, and the vertical movement of the printing platform is achieved, which is not particularly desirable for large printers, since the ultimate weight of the printed product increases exponentially when the printing size increases, for example, at a material density of 1.0g/cm when the printer size is 400 × 400 × 400mm³Calculating to obtain a limit weight of 64 Kg; and when the size is increased to 1000 x 1000mm, the ultimate weight is increased to 1000 Kg. This results in severe requirements for the platform, such as bearing requirements, flatness requirements, and machining accuracy requirements, and for this reason, large machine tools such as planomillers and floor milling machines do not have the work table moving in the Z direction. The multi-nozzle parallel printing scheme is more advantageous in large-size printing, and the design and manufacturing difficulty of the large-size printer is increased due to the structure.

The invention patent with application number 201410445613.6, print head, printing mechanism and 3D printer of the multi-print head 3D printer, discloses another structure of a mechanism for multi-nozzle parallel printing. This scheme requires that the plane of motion of each shower nozzle is not overlapped, and it lets the shower nozzle that does not move in the coplanar can finally print at same height through the shower nozzle that can realize stretching out and drawing back, and the advantage of this scheme lies in a plurality of printer heads not in the coplanar motion, and the shower nozzle is scalable, therefore each shower nozzle all can be in the regional scope independent motion of full printing. However, when the number of the nozzles is large, the scheme requires that the nozzles on the upper layer are in the same plane with the nozzles on the lowest layer when extending out, and the nozzles on the lower layer can completely enter the base after contracting, so that the nozzles can cross the nozzles on the adjacent layer, and the structure of the nozzles is very complex and the precision is difficult to guarantee.

From the above analysis, it can be seen that the prior art scheme of multi-nozzle parallel printing is not very ideal.

Disclosure of Invention

In order to overcome the defects of the prior art, the invention provides the multi-nozzle 3D printer, and the multi-print-head parallel printing function is better realized by adopting a nozzle assembly supporting multiple materials and a fixed printing platform structure.

In order to achieve the purpose, the invention adopts the following technical scheme:

the utility model provides a many shower nozzles 3D printer, includes moving mechanism, shower nozzle subassembly and print platform, be equipped with N shower nozzle subassembly on the printer, N is greater than or equal to 2 and N is the integer, but contain K independent control send the shower nozzle of silk in the shower nozzle subassembly, K is greater than or equal to 2 and K is the integer, and every shower nozzle subassembly all can independently be XY direction motion under the drive of the XY axle moving mechanism that corresponds.

Preferably, the nozzle assembly comprises a nozzle switching structure for switching a plurality of nozzles in a printing process.

Preferably, the spray head assembly comprises 2 spray heads capable of independently controlling wire feeding.

Preferably, the 3D printer further comprises a moving support, the N nozzle assemblies and the corresponding XY axis moving mechanisms are mounted on the moving support, the moving support can move in the Z direction under the driving of the Z axis moving mechanism, and the printing platform is fixed below the moving support. When printing, the printing platform is fixed, and the moving support drives the nozzle assembly to move in the Z direction.

Preferably, the 3D printer still includes the heat preservation cavity, print platform installs inside the heat preservation cavity.

Preferably, the movement mechanism is installed outside the heat-preservation cavity, nozzles of all spray heads in the spray head assembly extend into the heat-preservation cavity, and the wire extruding mechanism in the spray head assembly is installed outside the heat-preservation cavity.

Compared with the prior art, the invention has the advantages that by adopting the multi-nozzle spray head assembly capable of independently feeding wires, each spray head assembly can print various different materials, the problems that a complex printed piece is not easy to support and multi-material printing is difficult to realize are effectively solved, and the problem that the large-size printer adopting a movable platform scheme is difficult to design and process is solved by adopting a fixed printing platform structure.

Drawings

Fig. 1 is a schematic three-dimensional structure diagram according to an embodiment of the present invention.

Fig. 2 is a front view of an embodiment of the present invention.

Detailed Description

The multi-nozzle 3D printer and the multi-nozzle parallel printing method of the present invention are further described below with reference to the accompanying drawings and the detailed description, so as to more clearly understand the technical ideas claimed in the present invention.

The multi-nozzle 3D printer shown in fig. 1-2 includes 3 nozzle assemblies 11, and the 3 nozzle assemblies 11 are used for realizing parallel printing on the printing platform 12. The showerhead assembly 11 includes two independent showerheads, a mold showerhead 111 and a support showerhead 112. Two shower nozzles are used for printing model material and holding material respectively, and the switching structure among two shower nozzle accessible shower nozzle subassemblies 11 realizes the height switch, and the high adjustment of the nozzle of shower nozzle of will working is to the height about being less than the high 2mm of non-working shower nozzle during printing, prevents that non-working shower nozzle can scrape and print the model and lead to printing the failure.

The moving bracket 15 is mounted on the Z-axis moving mechanism 14 and can move in the Z direction under the driving of the Z-axis moving mechanism 14. Two X-axis linear guide rails 151 are arranged on the front side and the rear side of the motion bracket 15, and 3 cross beams 13 are arranged on the X-axis linear guide rails 151 and can move on the X-axis linear guide rails. Two Y-axis linear guide rails 131 are arranged on the cross beam 13, and the spray head assembly 11 is installed on the linear guide rails 131 and can move on the linear guide rails 131 in a Y-axis mode. 3 beams 13 and respective X-axis driving mechanisms, and 3Y-axis linear guide rails 131 on the beams 13 and Y-axis driving mechanisms thereon respectively form 3 XY-axis moving mechanisms corresponding to the spray head assembly 11, and the 3 XY-axis moving mechanisms share the X-axis linear guide rail 151. As can be seen from the above description, the 3 head assemblies 11 can move in the XY directions independently driven by the above mechanism.

The printing platform 12 is wrapped inside by the heat preservation cavity 16, and the XY-axis movement mechanism and the Z-axis movement mechanism 14 are both arranged outside the heat preservation cavity 16. The nozzles of two spray heads in each spray head assembly 11 penetrate through the heat insulation layer on the top of the heat insulation cavity 16 and extend into the heat insulation cavity, and other components such as a wire extruding machine and the like are arranged outside the heat insulation cavity 16. Because the fixed printing platform structure is adopted in this embodiment, the traditional thermal insulation cavity cannot meet the above requirements, and therefore the thermal insulation cavity adopted in this embodiment is a variable-space thermal insulation cavity, and the applicant of the present invention elaborates the cavity structure in the invention patent application "variable-space thermal insulation cavity structure and 3D printer using the same" with application number 201810599282X.

The core technical point of the embodiment is that a plurality of independent nozzle assemblies 11 are included, and a single nozzle assembly 11 includes two nozzles with switchable heights, which are respectively used for printing a model and supporting materials, so that the defect that only a single material can be printed at one time in the prior art is solved, meanwhile, the printing platform in the embodiment is a fixed platform, and the nozzle assemblies 11 and the corresponding XY-axis movement mechanisms are installed on the movement support 15 and driven by the Z-axis movement mechanisms 14 to do Z-axis movement, so that the nozzle assemblies can move in three directions of XYZ. The structure solves the defects that the design and manufacture difficulty is high and the precision is not easy to guarantee when large-size and heavy-load printing is carried out due to the adoption of a platform lifting motion structure in the prior art.

The embodiment shows typical application of the idea of the invention, when the model comprises more than two model materials, the model can be realized by only increasing the number of the spray heads in the spray head assembly, and for a printer with a larger size, more spray head assemblies can be further arranged to further improve the printing efficiency.

Various other changes and modifications to the above-described embodiments and concepts will become apparent to those skilled in the art from the above description, and all such changes and modifications are intended to be included within the scope of the present invention as defined in the appended claims.