Additive manufacturing still suffers from redundant support material usage when printing parts with overhanging features. All the supports will be removed after fabrication, resulting in wasted materials. There are many works conducted for reducing support waste by improving support strategies. However, using different support strategies may lead to different printed qualities. In this paper, the effect of support strategy on printed qualities is investigated in fused deposition modelling processes. Three different support strategies are adopted for manufacturing the same 3D part. The finished surface roughness and flexural properties are compared for evaluating different support strategies, as well as the material waste and printing time. The results show that different support strategies may result in different printed surface roughness and flexural properties. To achieve the balance between support consumption and properties of printed parts, it becomes necessary to understand the effect of supports on printed qualities for choosing a best support strategy.

当打印具有悬垂特征的零件时，增材制造仍会遭受多余支撑材料的使用。所有支撑物在制造后都会被移除，从而浪费材料。为改善支持策略而减少支持浪费的工作很多。但是，使用不同的支持策略可能会导致不同的印刷质量。在本文中，在熔融沉积建模过程中研究了支持策略对印刷质量的影响。采用了三种不同的支持策略来制造相同的3D零件。比较完成的表面粗糙度和挠曲性能，以评估不同的支撑策略以及材料浪费和印刷时间。结果表明，不同的支撑策略可能导致不同的印刷表面粗糙度和弯曲性能。为了在支撑物消耗和印刷零件的性能之间取得平衡，有必要了解支撑物对印刷质量的影响，以选择最佳的支撑策略。