Research on a Fiber Corner Compensation Algorithm in a 3D Printing Layer of Continuous Fiber-Reinforced Composite Materials

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

It is my fervent recommendation that you accept this paper.

Author Response

Thank you very much for your affirmation. The language of the article was further polished.

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Thank you very much for your comments. All your questions are corrected in the revised manuscript.

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

1. Authors can add more details about the code they devoloped

2.Apart from Markforged there are other technologies in which the user has better freedoom and control over fibre placements. I recommend you to check "Anisoprint" .

3. In lines 160 to 170, the issue discussed has other mechanical reasons than what the Authors have highlighted. Kindly think on those aspects

 

3. Section 2.2 lines 134-235 plz recheck for repetition of statements

Author Response

Thank you very much for your comments. All your questions are corrected in the revised manuscript. Please see the attachment.

1. Authors can add more details about the code they devoloped

Response: The slicing software used to generate g-code in the article is written by the author. The author added a reference of the slicing software in the new manuscript.  (Line 150)

2. Apart from Markforged there are other technologies in which the user has better freedoom and control over fibre placements. I recommend you to check "Anisoprint".

Response: The author has added corresponding descriptions in the revised manuscript. (Line 69-71)

3. In lines 160 to 170, the issue discussed has other mechanical reasons than what the Authors have highlighted. Kindly think on those aspects.

Response: The author further carefully examined the printing equipment to confirm the accurate feed of the CFRF during the printing process. The mechanical reason is mainly due to the different diameter of CFRF material and nozzle. It cannot ensure that CFRF follows the motion to the corresponding position in the printing the corner. As a result, the gradual accumulation of errors during printing CFRF leads to blockage of the nozzle. This paper is formally based on this research. (Line 155-157)

4. Section 2.2 lines 134-235 plz recheck for repetition of statements

Response: The author has reviewed and deleted the repetition of statements.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 4 Report

In this manuscript, the authors test a method for fiber corner compensation in continuous fiber FDM printing. The paper is detailed, but it is not clear what the new contribution is and the application is extremely specific. Many of the ideas discussed have been common knowledge in the field for several years and were introduced in many of the papers the authors cited in the literature review. In addition, other software and techniques exist to complete this task and seem to do a better job than what is presented in this paper. This could be an interesting conference paper, technical note, or tutorial but there is no clear novel theory, conclusions, or widely-applicable technique offered to justify publishing this as a research article in an international journal. Perhaps the authors can revise the paper to deal with this issue, but the paper will need a significant amount of expansion. In addition to establishing some kind of significant novel contribution, the authors should consider the following comments: 

1. The paper is not prepared in the MDPI template layout, which made it more difficult and frustrating to review. Please fix this before the next round of review. Please do NOT use double-spacing. 

2. Technical papers should be written in third-person voice (i.e., do not use "I", "we", "our", etc. Just state the facts and do not refer to the authors. 

3. The technical terms and acronyms used in the paper are not consistent. Check and fix this. 

4. Some sections of the paper need polishing and improvement on the English usage. Carefully review and polish before the next round of reviews. 

5. As a general rule, you should not start a sentence with a reference. Occasionally this is ok, but this is done many time in this paper and it makes the text awkward to read. 

6. More information about the printer used in this study needs to be given. That is not a common well-known machine, so it needs to be discussed in more depth. 

7. The way that the algorithm the authors claim as the main contribution for the paper is very awkwardly presented and hard to follow. A flowchart and mathematical format for the algorithm should be presented. 

8. Table 1: Add the relative humidity of the room to this table, as this is a very important parameter for printing both basic PLA and fiber-embedded PLA. 

9. Table 2: It is not clear from the table what these numbers mean. This needs to be addressed in the table itself. 

10. Table 2: Were more precise numbers not possible to obtain? 

11. Lines 301-312: This section is very confusing and not clearly written. It is not clear what was done or why. The abstract mentions 960 samples tested, but this is not discussed or supported by the text. It seems to me that the authors are taking each fiber for each corner for each layer as one sample. If this is how the claim is constructed, the sample number is misleading and suggests a much more extensive study than what was actually done. However, this section of the paper is poorly written and so it is possible that I am misunderstanding what is going on here. 

12. The discussion of the results and the conclusions given are superficial and need to be expanded, specifically discussing what is novel and new about this work to justify a research article. 

I recommend asking the authors for a major revision, followed by another round of review, before a decision can be made on the paper. I do not support publication of the paper in its current form.  

Author Response

Thank you very much for your comments. All your questions are corrected in the revised manuscript. Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 5 Report

The present study reports “Research on fiber corner compensation algorithm in 3D printing layer of continuous fiber composite materials”. To make this paper publishable the authors need to consider following comments:

-Abstract: For me, it’s not clear that what is “independent extrusion” exactly? It’s mentioned in different places of text but just named. After first sentence (which I’m not sure it’s a trend yet) you used it immediately and readers doesn’t know what is it. In keywords, please write “corner optimization algorithm” not corner optimization. What is the phrase that CFRF is a short form for it? (maybe it’s clear but you didn’t write!). the sentence “From the experimental results, the corner…” is unclear and don’t understand. 127,200mm is 172 cm or 127.2mm? I think better to rewrite abstract in better shape.

-Introduction: I understand it’s a comprehensive explanation of literature, but four pages introduction is too much for an original paper (it’s not a review). Mostly it should be 10% of your paper. The sentence “…few foreign 3D fiber…” is unclear; please rewrite it.

-Research base: all references are devoted to introduction; you didn’t follow any works/methods for other sections? First paragraph of this section is still introduction. Please mention in the caption of fig1, what is a and b photos. What is fig 1a brand/producer? (Is it commercial or home-developed). Based on fig7, how do you see the future of this method? (as you mentioned it’s a new trend, is it really?) I see in the figure that the accuracy is not great (also photography is low-quality too).

-Section 3 is written better than other parts. The paper has no acknowledgment or fund or supplementary files, etc. to announce in the end of paper?

 

Author Response

Thank you very much for your comments. All your questions are corrected in the revised manuscript.

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

Good Work

Reviewer 4 Report

Thank you for the revision. All of my major concerns have been addressed. 

Reviewer 5 Report

The paper is modified and can be published by the opinion of the Editor.