Reconfigurable Control Software for Additive Manufacturing Machines

This paper presents a novel reconfigurable control software for Additive Manufacturing (AM) machines. At first, reconfigurable architecture is created based on the principle of layered manufacturing which all AM processes should follow. Then, the control software is designed aimed at providing consistent user experience for various AM machines. At last, the proposed control software is successfully applied to two different kinds of AM machines. Compared to the old control software on these machines, nearly 70% of functions are reused in the new one, which leads to a reduction of the research and development time eventually.