The model or part is produced by extruding small flattened strings of molten material to form layers as the material hardens immediately after extrusion from the nozzle. A plastic filament or metal wire is unwound from a coil and supplies material to an extrusion nozzle which can turn the flow on and off. There is typically a worm-drive that pushes the filament into the nozzle at a controlled rate. The nozzle is heated to melt the material. The thermoplastics are heated past their glass transition temperature and are then deposited by an extrusion head.
The nozzle can be moved in both horizontal and vertical directions by a numerically controlled mechanism. The nozzle follows a tool-path controlled by a computer-aided manufacturing (CAM) software package, and the part is built from the bottom up, one layer at a time. Stepper motors or servo motors are typically employed to move the extrusion head. The mechanism used is often an X-Y-Z rectilinear design.
Although as a printing technology FDM is very flexible, and it is capable of dealing with small overhangs by the support from lower layers, FDM generally has some restrictions on the slope of the overhang, and cannot produce unsupported stalactites.
Many materials are available, such as ABS (Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene), PLA (Polylactic acid), PC (Polycarbonate), Polyamide PA, Polystyrene PS, rubber, among many others, with different trade-offs between strength and temperature properties. In addition, even the colour of a given thermoplastic material may affect the strength of the printed object.
