In-Situ Monitoring of Layer-Wise Fabrication by Electrical Resistance Measurements in 3D Printing

This paper introduces a characterization technique to study 3D-printing of conductors and sensors during fabrication. Currently characterization of 3D-printed sensors is done after fabrication. In our novel method, however, the electrical resistance is monitored in-situ by electrically contacting the part in the beginning of the print process. This way, the effect of every additional layer on the total resistance is determined. Our new experimental method opens up ways to study 3D-printing of sensors in order to better understand the processes at hand, e.g. it may allow distinguishing between bulk and inter-layer resistances. FEM simulations and experiments are used to validate the use of this new method