Multi-Axis Additive Manufacturing for Customized Automotive Components

The reproduction of automobile components through additive manufacturing presents significant geometric challenges, as many automotive parts feature complex, organically shaped surfaces that are difficult to fabricate accurately using conventional 3D printing without wasteful support structures. Multi-axis digital light processing addresses this by orienting a robotic arm to cure resin layers at varying angles, enabling fabrication of geometries that fixed-axis systems cannot reliably reproduce. However, layers printed at non-orthogonal orientations exhibit non-uniform thickness, which traditional DLP systems cannot accommodate without subdividing layers and increasing print time and support requirements. This paper introduces a variable exposure method that divides each layer into sublayers and modulates UV illumination duration proportionally to local thickness using an established cure-depth relationship, reducing total layer count, print time, and support structures while improving geometric accuracy and reducing resin usage by over 47%.