Fused filament fabrication

Common card · No. 202366

Fused filament fabrication (FFF), also known as fused deposition modeling (with the trademarked acronym FDM), or filament freeform fabrication, is a 3D printing process that uses a continuous filament of a thermoplastic material. Filament is fed from a large spool through a moving, heated printer extruder head, and is deposited on the growing work. The toolhead, also known as printhead with the heated nozzle is controlled by a computer executing g-code files that are generated by a slicer which generates movements to match a 3D file. In one common design, the toolhead moves in two dimensions to deposit one horizontal plane, or layer, at a time; the work or the print head is then moved vertically by a small amount to begin a new layer. "Fused filament fabrication" was coined by the members of the RepRap project to give an acronym (FFF) that would be legally unconstrained in use. Fused filament printing has in the 2010s–2020s been the most popular process (by number of machines) for hobbyist...

Read on Wikipedia · Image John Abella, CC BY 2.0