Materials and Design 30 (2009) 29462954

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Materials and Design

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/matdes

Inuence of building strategies on the accuracy of parts in selective laser sintering

K. Senthilkumaran, Pulak M. Pandey *, P.V.M. Rao
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, New Delhi, India

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Article history:
Received 16 November 2008
Accepted 5 January 2009
Available online 22 January 2009
Keywords:
Selective laser sintering
Shrinkage compensation
Accuracy
Exposure strategy
Laser scanning

a b s t r a c t
Shrinkage in selective laser sintering process is primarily inuenced by material, process parameters and
the geometry of the fabricated part. The part inaccuracy due to this shrinkage is overcome by calibrating
and compensating it. Further improvements in accuracy of the part can be achieved by conducting more
studies to appreciate the nature of deviations, by subjecting calibration part to varying build conditions.
This paper presents the results of the experimental study carried out to understand shrinkage behavior in
selective laser sintered polyamide 12 parts. Due to the inherent nature of the process, the shrinkage
behavior is often inuenced by exposure strategies, part positioning, part orientation, and other compensations applied to the part. When fabricated under different settings, shrinkage behavior of calibration
parts tends to differ from usual. In the present work, the variations in error patterns due to different strategies in building the calibration part have been reported. The discussions presented in this paper on the
shrinkage behavior of plastic parts are likely to make the process of compensation efcient and hence aid
in improving the accuracy of the process.
2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
Rapid prototyping (RP) is an additive manufacturing process for
low volume, high value, custom-designed parts. These parts can be
made out of common engineering thermo-plastics such as polyamides, ABS, polycarbonate, polyphenylsulfone (PPSF) to metal
parts such as titanium, stainless steel and tool steel [1]. Since the
delivery of the rst commercial machine in 1988, RP has grown
as integral part of the new product development process. The use
of RP has reduced time to market a product, cut trial costs, and improved product quality by giving design and manufacturing professionals a tool to quickly verify and ne-tune designs before
committing these to expensive tooling and fabrication. RP also
has some challenges that must be improved upon before it becomes rapid manufacturing (RM) for producing parts in small
batches or customized parts. One of the main challenges is part
accuracy. This is main concern of industries such as aerospace
and bio-medical which would like to use RP technology for producing directly usable products. The capability to produce a part in
hours without any tooling is a powerful advantage for many industries. With the stronger plastics and even metallic materials used
in some of the RP processes, parts can be produced that will withstand reasonable amount of stress and higher temperature ranges.
However the parts produced tend to warp and/or shrink from its
given dimensions, forcing the user to run several trials of a part
to reach its ideal dimension or settle for a slightly inaccurate part
* Corresponding author. Tel.: +91 11 26596083.
E-mail address: pmpandey@mech.iitd.ac.in (P.M. Pandey).
0261-3069/$ - see front matter 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.matdes.2009.01.009

[2]. In order to improve the accuracy of the part, the shrinkage

behavior of parts during manufacture needs to be better understood. The work presented in this paper was carried out to investigate the shrinkage behavior of parts produced by one of the RP
process namely selective laser sintering (SLS).
SLS is a powder based RP technology that allows generating
complex 3D parts layer by layer. A CAD model, created in any solid
modeller, is rst tessellated and sliced into layers of 0.050.3 mm
thickness to get contour information of each layer. This information is used to sinter the selected areas of each layer while producing parts. SLS uses ne powder which is spread uniformly by a
roller or a recoater on the machine bed and scanned selectively
by a laser of power 25100 W such that the surface tension of
the grains is overcome and they are sintered together. Before the
laser scans, entire machine bed is heated to a temperature below
the melting point of the material by infra red heaters to minimize
thermal distortion and to facilitate fusion to the previous layer. Laser power is adjusted to bring the selected powder areas to a temperature just sufcient for the powder particles to get sintered.
After allowing sufcient time for the sintered layer to cool down
without causing signicant internal stresses, the part bed moved
down by one layer thickness to facilitate new powder layer to be
spread by a recoater. The sintered material forms the part while
the un-sintered powder remains in its place and acts as a support
for the subsequent layers and may be cleaned away and recycled
once the build is complete.
SLS is one of the few RP processes capable of producing durable
and functional parts from a wide range of prototype materials. The
functional prototypes are wear resistant, durable and chemical

K. Senthilkumaran et al. / Materials and Design 30 (2009) 29462954

resistant [3]. These parts can be made to bend, snap or bolt together
and form exible hinges [4]. However, parts produced by SLS are
poor in terms of accuracy due to the various errors accumulating
from data preparation stage to nishing stage. One of the main
sources of size and shape variations of the part is shrinkage during
processing. The following paragraphs present some of the previous
work carried out by researchers to study shrinkage in SLS process.
Wang et al. [5] studied the effect of process parameters on
shrinkage characteristics in SLS process. They found that percentage shrinkage increases with increase in the scanning speed and
hatch spacing, but decreases with increasing layer thickness, the
laser power, part bed temperature and delay time. They used neural networks for the study of effect of process parameters. Ragunath and Pandey [6] studied the effect of process parameters on the
process and material shrinkage. They found that scan length inuences shrinkage in the X direction. They also predicted that scaling
factors can have a linear relationship with scan length. They derived empirical relations for percentage shrinkage in terms of scan
length using Taguchi method. However, they used scaling factors
based on the maximum dimensions not on the individual scan
lengths while compensating using the model developed by them.
Hopkinson and Sercombe [7] investigated the effect of part height,
part position and build direction on the shrinkage during indirect
SLS of aluminum powder. They found that errors decrease with increase in nominal dimensions in inltrated state than in a green
state for all build condition. They found that error in Z direction
is more pronounced than in-plane errors due to phenomenon
called Z-growth whereby the heat from the laser penetrates beyond the down facing surface to bond unwanted particles. They
characterized tolerances achievable on different build orientations
and found that a tolerance of 0.1 mm is achievable for a 40 mm
part in the XY direction and 0.3 mm in Z direction. Zhu et al. [8]
studied the shrinkage behavior in metal powders. They quantied
two types of shrinkages namely thermal shrinkage and sintering
shrinkage. They found that in-plane shrinkage (X and Y shrinkage)
is very less compared to the shrinkage in the build direction. They
found that the sintering shrinkage is mainly caused by densication and is a kind of elastic compressive shortening. They suggested that thermal shrinkage due to cyclic heating can be
reduced by controlling process parameters. In their work, the thermal shrinkage increases with increase in laser power and shrinkage decreases with increase in scan speed and scan spacing. Ning
et al. [9] considered the effect of geometry on the shrinkage of
metallic parts. They introduced the speed compensation technique
based on the scan length. In their method, when building a part,
the laser scan speed is adjusted dynamically according to the scan
length which varies with geometric shape of the part. The different
scan speeds for the scan lengths are chosen based on the shrinkage
values at different speeds.
Ning et al. [10] conducted series of experiments for direct metal
laser sintering (DMLS) process to nd the effect of hatch length on
the material anisotropy, heterogeneity and part strength. They
concluded that short hatch lines cause serious shrinkage and the
part becomes less homogeneous. They proposed an algorithm to
nd out optimal hatch direction for a typical layer by considering
the shrinkage as a function of hatch length. Manetsberger et al.
[11] studied the effect of temperature, time and pressure on the
shrinkage of polymer parts. They used a thermal simulation as a
basis for shrinkage compensation in SLS process. They expressed
shrinkage values as a function of temperature and also showed a
linear dependency to the pressure applied. Jacobs [12] discussed
the effects of shrinkage variation on the accuracy of rapid tooling
inserts. His work mainly concentrated on random shrinkage and
found that standard deviation of random shrinkage is directly proportional to the mean process shrinkage. He also found that nonuniformity in shrinkage is mainly attributed to geometry of the

2947

part. He concluded that key to accuracy and repeatability of such

techniques is the reduction of mean process shrinkage to a smallest possible level. Wang [13] discussed the issues in calibration of
shrinkage and beam offset for the SLS process. Expressions for
shrinkage and beam offset in terms of the nominal diameter and
error after sintering were developed. They also discussed the effect
of part weight on the percentage shrinkage.
2. Research rationale
Shrinkage is strongly inuenced by the laser parameters, build
chamber temperature, cooling rate and geometry. The total shrinkage in SLS process is due to material shrinkage, process shrinkage
and thermal shrinkage [14]. During crystallization, the molecules
arrange themselves and occupy less volume thus leading to material shrinkage. During processing the powder particles fuse together to produce dense parts, leading to a decrease in porosity
and volume. During heating, the part expands due to the coefcient of thermal expansion and then shrinks during cooling. The
crystalline shrinkage occurring during cooling can be highly nonuniform along each direction due to high temperature gradient inside the powder bed. There can be expansionshrinkage behavior
during the time history of sintering [15]. A particular layer can
shrink non-uniformly due to its position, i.e., high or low temperature regions [16]. Moreover, there is a directional effect considering the direction in which laser scanning takes place and the
direction normal to it. It is evident from the review of the literature
that understandings developed in variations of shrinkage due to
process parameters are useful in nding an optimum set of process
parameters for producing accurate parts. In most of these studies, a
standard test specimen is used with the assumption that shrinkage
is independent of geometry and is a constant value. The assumption that shrinkage compensation factors remain unchanged with
geometry and build conditions is one of the major limitations in
producing accurate parts. In reality, shrinkage of parts is susceptible to changes in geometry and is heavily inuenced by building
strategies. For example, part placement, part orientation, scan
direction are the factors which are usually neglected in developing
shrinkage compensation factors. Another important parameter is
the beam offset which is usually taken as half of the spot diameter.
Sometimes beam offset is interpreted as the intercept of the linear
t between nominal dimensions and the error [4]. But such methods have limitations and sensitivity of shrinkage patterns to the errors in beam offset needs to be studied in detail.
So all the above factors need investigation to improve the present shrinkage compensation process. The experimental study presented in this paper aims at the investigation of shrinkage behavior
of polyamide material (PA2200) sintered using EOSINT P380 laser
sintering machine with changes in part orientation, exposure strategies and other compensations.

3. Details of the experiments

The SLS process involves a large number of process parameters
that are carefully controlled by the operator. Most of the process
parameters are decided by the knowledge and experience of the
machine builder and machine operator. The process parameters include layer thickness, laser power, hatch spacing, scanning speed,
part bed temperature, and scanning mode and pattern which are
shown in Fig. 1.
3.1. Selection of process parameters
Maximum power available with CO2 laser in the machine used
for experimentation is 58 W. Only 62% (36 W) of the maximum

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K. Senthilkumaran et al. / Materials and Design 30 (2009) 29462954

20

strips

Fig. 1. Process parameters affecting shrinkage.

power is used in the present experiment since curling is observed

at higher laser powers. Maximum scan speed as 4500 mm/s is chosen so that build time will be shorter. The laser spot size and energy density used in the experiments are 0.6 mm and 26.66 kW/
m2, respectively. The process parameters used for contour exposure are lower laser power and scan speed compared to hatching
exposure in order to achieve a good surface nish. If the part is
not allowed to cool in controlled environment for long time, the
part tend to warp due to faster cooling in outside environment.
During faster cooling part develops signicant stresses causing
post-build warpage [16]. So the part is allowed to cool inside the
platform for 5 h. The process parameters used in the present experimental study are given in Table 1.
3.2. Details of the material
Specimens used in the study were fabricated using PA2200
which is a modied nylon 12 developed for use in SLS machines
by EOS Gmbh, Germany. The material is semi-crystalline in nature.
In an SLS process it is common to use mixture of fresh powder and
previously used but unsintered powder for building parts. Having
gone through a heating cycle, the previously used powder has
properties which are different from virgin powder. The material
used was refreshed and the ratio of mixing is 70% used powder
and 30% virgin powder. More amounts of fresh powder cause curling and warpage [17] and hence 30% fresh powder is used.
3.3. Test specimens
Since shrinkage needs to be studied for different nominal
lengths, the specimen should contain different lengths. So a specimen with different strip lengths (20200 mm with an increment of
10 mm for each strip) as shown in Fig. 2 is designed.
3.4. Exposure strategies and beam compensation
There are some important considerations in fabricating shrinkage calibration parts using different process parameters for contour lines and hatch lines. In most of the SLS systems, the laser
scans the top surface of a heated powder bed to form the area enclosed by contours of the layered object in raster scan mode
(hatching) in combination with the outlining of the cross-sections

Y
200

X
Fig. 2. Shrinkage calibration specimen.

of the part in vector scan mode (contouring). In hatching, the laser

scans across the powder surface in one dimension, turning the laser on and off at the boundaries of the contour. The complete
length of laser scan in one dimension is dependent upon of the size
and shape of contours dictated by part geometry. As discussed earlier, the contour lines are scanned with a low laser power and high
beam speed as compared to the hatch lines.
The diameter of the sintered zone is usually larger than the laser
diameter and is called as spot diameter or effective laser diameter.
In order to compensate the dimensional error due to spot diameter,
the laser beam should be offset from the boundaries of the crosssection of the object and is called beam offset. The beam offset values for contour and hatch lines are different. In the SLS system, the
beam offset can be entered separately for contouring and hatching.
For the powder at the edge of the boundary to be completely exposed to the laser beam during the contouring, the value of the
beam offset (dc), should be set to the half of the contour spot diameter as shown in Fig. 3a. If the beam offset for contour is less or
greater than half the effective beam diameter, then there is the
possibility of sintering powder outside the layer edge or not sintering part of the intended edge region, which would disrupt the
dimensional accuracy of the part.
During hatching, the initial beam offset value is again dened
with respect to the edge of the boundary (which should be larger

Table 1
Process parameters set for the experiments.
Parameter

Laser power (W)

Scan speed (m/s)
Hatch spacing (m)
Build chamber temperature (C)
Layer thickness (m)

Value
Hatching

Contouring

36
4.5
0.3  103

10
0.7
NA
176
0.15  103

Fig. 3. Two exposure strategies showing beam compensations.

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K. Senthilkumaran et al. / Materials and Design 30 (2009) 29462954

Deviations per unit length (%)

0.3

0.25

0.2

0.15
a=0.6 mm
a=0.645 mm

0.1

0.05
20

40

60

80

100

120

140

160

180

200

Nominal Dimensions (mm)

Fig. 4. Inuence of beam compensation adjustments on shrinkage pattern.

than that for contouring), however, in this case caution must be observed in guaranteeing that there are no unsintered particles between the contour path and the hatching region. Thus, the beam
offset for hatching (dh) must be chosen in such a way, so as to form
a narrow overlapping regions between the contour path and the
hatching region (Fig. 3). The overlap should not be too wide
though, to prevent over-sintering.

on shrinkage pattern, two different curves are plotted for deviations per unit length vs nominal dimensions.
Fig. 4 shows deviations per unit lengths for specimens using
beam compensation adjustment values with 0.6 and 0.645 mm
and its building strategies are listed in Table 2. As discussed earlier
if shrinkage of beam compensation adjustment values is not properly estimated, it introduces errors in deviations per unit length
pattern especially for smaller dimensions.

3.5. Calculation of percentage deviations per unit length

4.2. Effects of contouring and hatching
The percentage deviations per unit length (s) is calculated from
the following relation:

Lc  Lm
 100
Lc

where Lc is the nominal dimension of the part and Lm is the measured dimension of the part after sintering and cooling. In the present work, for some specimens, no beam compensation is applied
while fabricating specimens. The beam compensation value is adjusted to nominal dimensions while calculating deviations per unit
length. The adjusted nominal dimensions is Lc + a, where a is the
beam compensation adjustment value and is most of the times
equal to the spot diameter.
4. Results and discussion
4.1. Effect of beam compensation on shrinkage
As discussed earlier the beam compensation adjustment value
is normally chosen equal to the spot diameter. In earlier approaches the shrinkage of this width of scan line is usually neglected. In the present work, experiments are performed to study
the effect of this small shrinkage that is being neglected in deviations per unit length calculation.
In order to estimate the shrinkage in beam compensation
adjustment value (a) for the hatch lines, a part is designed with
dimensions 25  0.6  6 mm. The dimensions of this part are chosen such that when fabricated, this part will have single line exposure of laser beam. The thickness of the single hatch line part is
fabricated and measured and its value is found to be 0.555 mm.
Thus it is found that 0.6 mm scan track produced 0.555 mm thick
part after shrinkage. The percentage shrinkage calculated for this
single scan track is 7%. The beam compensation adjustment value
(a) is calculated as 0.645 mm after compensating this shrinkage.
In order to nd out the effect of this beam compensation value

Another set of experiment was conducted with two exposure

strategies to identify the variations in shrinkage. Two specimens
as shown in Fig. 2 are fabricated with two different exposure strategies as listed in Table 3. In one specimen, only hatch lines are ex-

Table 2
Building strategies for part compared in Fig. 4.
Process variable

Considering
shrinkage in a

Without considering
shrinkage in a

Scan lines are along

Strip lengths are oriented
along
Beam offset for hatching (dh)
Contour exposure
Beam offset for contour (dc)
Beam compensation
adjustment (a)
Scanning mirror inertia
compensation

X direction only
X direction

X direction only
X direction

0
Is OFF
NA
0.645 mm

0
Is OFF
NA
0.6 mm

Yes

Yes

Table 3
Building strategies for parts compared in Fig. 5.
Process variable

With contour
exposure

Without contour
exposure

Scan lines are along

Strip lengths are oriented along
Beam offset for hatching (dh)
Contour exposure
Beam offset for contour (dc)
Beam compensation adjustment
(a)
Scanning mirror inertia
compensation

X direction only
X direction
0.59 mm
Is ON
0.33 mm
0

X direction only
X direction
0
Is OFF
NA
0.645 mm

Yes

Yes

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K. Senthilkumaran et al. / Materials and Design 30 (2009) 29462954

0.65

Deviations per unit length (%)

0.6
0.55
0.5
0.45
0.4
Without contour exposure
With contour exposure

0.35
0.3
0.25
0.2
20

40

60

80

100

120

140

160

180

200

Nominal Dimensions (mm)

Fig. 5. Effect of contouring on error pattern.

posed and in another specimen both contour and hatch lines are
exposed as shown in Fig. 3. The dimensions are measured and
the deviations per unit length is calculated and plotted against
nominal dimensions for both specimens (Fig. 5).
For the specimen with only hatching exposure, the shrinkage is
found to vary between 0.2% and 0.3%. For the specimen with both
contour and hatching exposure, the shrinkage is found to vary between 0.35% and 0.65%. It is observed that this higher percentage of
shrinkage is caused primarily due to the constraining effect of the
contour exposure. Contour boundaries arrest the expansion of the
layer occurring during sintering process [8]. In addition to this,
more noise in error pattern is observed with the contour exposed
part than that of hatch line exposed part. The contour lines are
scanned with a low laser power and high beam speed as compared
to the hatch lines. This causes non-uniform shrinkage between two
lengths of specimens. Also the constraining effect is not consistent
between different strips of specimen and the result is a random
noise found over quadratic curve tted to deviations per unit
length data as shown in Fig. 5.
4.3. Effect of inertia of scanning mirror on shrinkage
Usually there are variations in scanning speed due to acceleration and deceleration of scanning mirror during hatching exposure
at the boundaries of the layer which are to be eliminated to get a
uniform energy density. In order to avoid inconsistencies in the energy density of exposure, the length of scan during which acceleration and deceleration of galvano mirrors takes place, should be
compensated. The laser should be switched off while scanning
these lengths and hence no exposure on this compensated length.
This length of unexposed compensated region is independent of

part size, shape and location. Some of the commercial machines

usually call this kind of exposure strategy as skywriting [18]
(Fig. 6). In the present study, the effect of this compensation on
deviations per unit length is investigated experimentally. In another experiment, two specimens (Fig. 2) are fabricated with process parameters listed in Table 1 and building strategies as given
in Table 4.
In one of the specimens, the inertia of the mirror is compensated while the other specimen is fabricated without compensating the inertia effects. The deviations per unit length between
these two specimens is compared in Fig. 7. The second degree
curve, tted using deviations per unit length data points shows
variations in shrinkage behavior between two specimens.
Shrinkage decreases with increase in nominal dimensions in the
uncompensated specimens and it matches with the commonly reported shrinkage pattern in literature [6,9,10,12]. But after compensating inertia effect, the shrinkage trends are reversed. It is
found that the deviations per unit length in smaller strip length
of compensated specimen is lower than the uncompensated specimen. In compensated specimens, exposure strategy produces lesser energy in smaller scan lengths unlike the uncompensated
specimens. This produces less densication and shrinkage. Hence
compensating inertia effects of scanning mirror lowers the shrinkage in small strip lengths.
4.4. Effect of part orientation on deviations per unit length
A study of change in specimen orientation in XY plane is important due to anisotropic nature of the shrinkage. Two sets of shrinkage calibration specimens, one set parallel to X axis and another
parallel to Y axis are fabricated (Fig. 8) with building strategies tabulated in Table 5. The deviations per unit length while strip lengths
are parallel to X and Y directions of the machine are calculated and
plotted in Fig. 9. The shrinkage of strips along X direction varies be-

Table 4
Building strategies for parts compared in Fig. 7.

Fig. 6. Skywriting exposure strategy.

Process variable

With skywriting

Without skywriting

Scan lines are along

Strip lengths are oriented along
Beam offset for hatching (dh)
Contour exposure
Beam offset for contour (dc)
Beam compensation adjustment (a)
Scanning mirror inertia compensation

Y direction only
Y direction
0
Is OFF
NA
0.645 mm
Yes

Y direction only
Y direction
0
Is OFF
NA
0.645 mm
No

2951

Deviations per unit length (%)

K. Senthilkumaran et al. / Materials and Design 30 (2009) 29462954

2
Without skywriting
With skywriting

1.5
1

0.5
0
-0.5
20

40

60

80

100

120

140

160

180

200

Nominal Dimensions (mm)

Fig. 7. Effect of skywriting on error pattern.

tween 0.2% and 0.3% for different strip lengths, where as the
shrinkage along Y direction varies between 0.4% and 0.35%. For
specimen oriented along Y direction, the deviations per unit length
increases steeply with nominal dimensions for strip lengths between 20 and 120 mm and decreases gradually after 120 mm. Also
expansion rather shrinkage is found for small strip lengths (20, 30
and 40 mm strips). As discussed earlier, there is a shrinkage
expansion behavior during time-history of sintering [15]. Between
the scan lengths 20 and 110 mm, the expansion dominates the
shrinkage. This expansion is basically the falling of powder particles while melting and it is inuenced by various forces like buoyant force, marangoni ow and gravity and a more detailed
explanation for this in-plane expansion is given by Zhu et al. [8].
There is a larger variation of shrinkage to the nominal dimension in Y direction specimen due to in-homogenous nature of the
shrinkage in Y direction inuenced by two things: (a) thermal gradients and (b) recoater movements.
Firstly, the thermal gradient within a build chamber and the
variations in temperature during the building and cooling processes differ with the different length of strips in specimen. The
reason for this lies in the variation in the energy density. It should
be noted that larger strip length has large delay time between consecutive exposures of the same point, whereas lower length has
smaller delay time [19]. And due to the very low thermal conductivity of the material used in the process, the part bed retains heat
over a relatively long period of time. Moreover, shrinkage in larger
strip length is very different from that occurring in smaller length
strips since shrinkage in large geometries tends to be retarded owing to internal stresses [11].

Secondly, recoating exerts non-uniform uniform pressure on

the spread powder and causes a non-uniform shrinkage. Unlike
conventional sintering, no pressure is applied in SLS process during
sintering. But while recoating, the slot feeding mechanism exerts a
small pressure by the self weight of the powder contained in the
recoater. The movement of the recoater is along the X direction
of the machine. The weight of the powder contained in the recoater
varies in position along the Y direction as it deposits while moving
from one end to another [20]. So the pressure exerted on the new
spread powder layer and frictional forces between the new powder
being spread and already sintered layer are not uniform in Y direction. The shrinkage in SLS process has a linear relationship with
this pressure and frictional forces [11]. This in-homogenous distribution in intensity of powder deposited causes larger variations in
shrinkage for Y direction specimens.
4.5. Effect of scan direction
The commonly used hatching strategy in SLS process is a raster
type scanning. The scanning lines are generated and exposed by
one of the four schemes: (1) along X direction only, (2) along Y
direction only, (3) exposure along both X and Y direction and (4)
along X direction in one layer and along Y in next layer (parallel
to X and Y on alternate layers). In order to study the effect of scan
direction, in another experiment, two shrinkage calibration parts
(Fig. 2) are fabricated with building strategies listed in Table 6 to
compare the deviations per unit lengths while scanning parallel
to X and Y directions (type 1 and 2 exposure). The percentage deviations per unit length of nominal dimensions are compared for X
and Y direction scanning parts as shown in Fig. 10.
Higher shrinkage (0.40.6%) is observed for the specimen in
which scanning is along X direction than for the Y direction part

Table 5
Building strategies for parts compared in Fig. 9.

Fig. 8. Build orientation and scanning direction of the specimen.

Process variable

Parts oriented along

X

Parts oriented along

Y

Scan lines are along

Strip lengths are oriented along
Beam offset for hatching (dh)
Contour exposure
Beam offset for contour (dc)
Beam compensation adjustment (a)
Scanning mirror inertia
compensation

X direction only
X direction
0
Is OFF
NA
0.645 mm
Yes

Y direction only
Y direction
0
Is OFF
NA
0.645 mm
Yes

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K. Senthilkumaran et al. / Materials and Design 30 (2009) 29462954

Deviations per unit length (%)

0.3
0.2
0.1
0
-0.1

Strip length along X direction

-0.2

Strip length along Y direction

-0.3
-0.4
-0.5
-0.6
20

40

60

80
100
120
140
Nominal dimensions (mm)

160

180

200

Fig. 9. Effect of specimen orientation.

(0.4 to 0.35%). Scan length for the Y direction part is very short
and is constant for all strip length in scanning parallel to X direction unlike scanning in Y direction where scan length is equal to
the strip lengths. While scanning parallel to X direction, the shrinkage is dominant than expansion for lower length of strips. Expansion in Y direction is arrested by the scan lines parallel to X
directions as shown in Fig. 11. As discussed already, the expansion
and non-uniformity in shrinkage in Y direction part is clearly visible in the second degree curve (Fig. 10) tted to deviations per unit
length data points for Y direction scanning.

Table 6
Building strategies for the specimens compared in Fig. 10.
Process variable

Scanning along X

Scanning along Y

Scan lines are along

Strip lengths are oriented along
Beam offset for hatching (dh)
Contour exposure
Beam offset for contour (dc)
Beam compensation adjustment (a)
Positioning error adjustment
Scanning mirror inertia compensation

X direction only
Y direction
0
Is OFF
NA
0.645 mm
Yes
Yes

Y direction only
Y direction
0
Is OFF
NA
0.645 mm
NA
Yes

4.6. Compensating positioning errors and its effect on shrinkage curves

The laser path planning is entirely carried out by the process
software. There are certain errors which creep into the shrinkage
pattern due to limitations in positioning ability of the scanner
hardware. In SLS process, the laser scan path is computed from a
layered le using a dedicated computer program. The approximations used in the hatch line generation algorithms causes dimensional errors in the fabricated part which alters the shrinkage
pattern of specimens and should be carefully corrected. One of
them is the positioning error or approximation error. The author
observed that in SLS machine, the layer boundary to be exposed
is super imposed over a xed two dimensional grid pattern. Then
the rst and last scan lines are aligned to pass through the grid
lines rather its original intended dexel space as shown in Fig. 12.
It seems that this approach is mainly driven by the inability of
the scanner to position the beam to the intended dexel space. This
grid has 0.5 mm spacing for the machine used for experimentation
and this value depends upon the positioning ability of the galvanoscanner used in SLS machine. The rst and last hatch lines are
snapped to this grid lines and in between hatch lines are generated
based on the hatch spacing value input to the machine. The nominal dimension fabricated can be bigger or smaller than the original
CAD dimension depending on the length of the specimen (Fig. 12).

Deviations per unit length (%)

0.8
0.6
0.4
0.2
0
Scanning parallel to X
Scanning parallel to Y

-0.2
-0.4
-0.6
20

40

60

80
100
120
140
Nominal dimensions (mm)

160

Fig. 10. Effect of scan direction on shrinkage pattern.

180

200

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Table 7
Building strategies for parts compared in Fig. 13.
Process variable

Positioning error
compensated

Positioning error
uncompensated

Scan lines are along

Strip lengths are oriented
along
Beam offset for hatching (dh)
Contour exposure
Beam offset for contour (dc)
Beam compensation
adjustment (a)
Positioning error adjustment
Scanning mirror inertia
compensation

X direction only
Y direction

X direction only
Y direction

0
Is OFF
NA
0.645 mm

0
Is OFF
NA
0.645 mm

Yes
Yes

No
Yes

In order to realize the effect of this error, all positioning errors

are recorded from the user interface of the process software for different length of the strips. Then these positioning errors are adjusted to the nominal dimension which will be subsequently
used for the deviations per unit length calculation. The effect of
this positioning error during hatch generation is predominant
when scan direction is perpendicular to length variation direction.
So a specimen previously fabricated with building strategies as
listed in Table 7 which had strip length variations along Y direction
and hatch lines parallel to X direction is used for the present study.
The deviations per unit length are calculated with CAD dimension
as well as positioning errors adjusted nominal dimensions. The results are plotted in Fig. 13 and the shrinkage pattern (second degree curve tted to percentage deviations) for uncorrected
nominal dimension is found to be similar to one found in literature
[9,10,12]. Moreover, high random noise is found due to aligning the
position of rst and last hatch lines to nearest increments of 0.5.
In the case of the positioning error corrected nominal dimensions, the shrinkage was lower and its magnitude is found to be
consistent with the other specimens fabricated in earlier experiments where positioning error is not present (e.g. specimens with
strip length variations and scanning direction are parallel). It is
concluded that by compensating the positioning errors the randomness in shrinkage values can be minimized and efcient calibration and compensation of shrinkage can be achieved. Most of
the shrinkage curves discussed in this work can be modeled mathematically and can be used in dexel based compensation system
[21] to improve the accuracy of the SLS parts.

Fig. 11. Scan direction effects for smaller strip length.

Fig. 12. Positioning error in hatching.

Deviations per unit length (%)

1.8
1.6
Position error compensated
Position error uncompensated

1.4
1.2

1
0.8
0.6
0.4
20

40

60

80

100

120

140

160

Nominal Dimensions (mm)

Fig. 13. Effect of positioning error on percentage shrinkage.

180

200

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K. Senthilkumaran et al. / Materials and Design 30 (2009) 29462954

5. Conclusion

References

Our overall research goal is to understand the nature of shrinkage occurring in SLS process to improve the accuracy of the parts.
This paper focused on the shrinkage behavior by subjecting the
shrinkage calibration specimen to varying build conditions. Certain
compensations other than shrinkage are needed to get accurate
estimate of the shrinkage. Beam offset, inertia of scanning mirror
and positioning errors in hatch generations are found to delude
the shrinkage pattern. Moreover, exposure strategies and part orientation are found to inuence the accuracy of the part to be produced. The conclusions which can be drawn from the work
presented in this paper are highlighted below:

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 The directional effect due to specimen orientation is found to

inuence the shrinkage pattern and it is found that the shrinkage along Y direction is highly non-uniform than in X direction
when strip lengths and scan lengths are parallel.
 It is found that a noise component is introduced on mean deviations per unit length if the part is exposed using both contour
and hatch lines.
 Moreover, high shrinkage is observed at lower scan lengths if
the inertia of scanning mirrors is not compensated.
 If shrinkage of beam compensation adjustment value is not
properly estimated, introduces errors in percentage shrinkage
pattern especially for smaller dimensions.
 Positioning errors are observed in the hatch generation and it is
found to be one of the sources of random noise in the shrinkage
pattern for certain exposure strategies.
 Shrinkage along scanning direction is found to be lower and it is
highly non-uniform than shrinkage across the scanning
direction.

The understandings developed in this work will be useful in

advancement of SLS process into a rapid manufacturing process
for fully functional plastic parts.