Development of an Adaptive Slicing Algorithm of Laminated Object Manufacturing Based 3D Printing for Freeform Formwork

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The topic of the manuscript is interesting. However, the discussion is poorly written. They must be extended compared to the results of the literature review. Other comments could be found as follows,

1)      No abbreviations should be used in the title.

2)      A half part of the abstract is a general information. They should be shortened to add the research method and highlighted results.

3)      No abbreviations should be used in keywords.

4)      The first paragraph is written without any references!

5)      Mentioning [12-18] without any descriptions is not proper for a literature review.

6)      The novelty of this manuscript should be highlighted in the introduction, compared to the literature review.

7)      The length of Part 2.1 is lengthy.

8)      All formulations need references.

9)      The structure of the manuscript is not proper. It should include the introduction, the research method, results and the discussion, the conclusion, and references.

10)  Different parts of the equipment should be mentioned on the image of Figure 4.

11)  What are W and L in Table 2?

12)  There is no discussion on obtained results. They must be compared to other results of other publications.

13)  The conclusion part is lengthy. It should be rewritten one by one in bullets, to show the novelty.

14)  The parts of the manuscript include the author contribution to conflicts of interest have no text! They should be removed if they are no applicable.

15)  The number of references is another evidence to have no discussion on obtained results. They must be extended to 35 articles for a better discussion. Moreover, they should be updated based on the recent publications, in 2015-2022.

16)  It is not clear how results in Figure 7 were obtained. More details of the research method should be added to the text.

17)  There are some literatures that could help authors for a better discussion, as follows,

*Alternate slicing and deposition strategies for fused deposition modelling of light curved parts

*Manufacturing automation system of freeform concrete formwork using S-LOM method

Author Response

We appreciate the reviewer's kind reviews and comments.

Please see the attachment.

The modified manuscript had to be used the "Track Change" feature to make it easier for reviewers to see the modifications.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

This is an interesting paper about optimizing LOM 3D printing technology. Adaptive slicing (variable thicknes) algorithm and its advantages are properly presented. However, I miss some disadvantages of this method also being explained in the paper. For example, if you build the part with different layer thickness, this also means that you have to use different thickness of EPS foam plate for each layer. Wouldn’t this complicate the manufacturing process at least to some extent? And also, if thickness of layers will be hugely different (like 5 to 30mm), than layers will have to be made with different process parametes? I would like you add some this issues in the paper. Then, I will recommend it for publishing.   

Author Response

We appreciate the reviewer's kind reviews and comments.

Please see the attachment.

The modified manuscript had to be used the "Track Change" feature to make it easier for reviewers to see the modifications.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

1) The novelty should be highlighted more. The related text should be mentioned in the last paragraph of the introduction. 

2) A new part was added for the discussion. However, no comparison could be seen. The suggested references and also other articles must be used for comparing the obtained results to the results of other publications. 

3) Some formulations still have no reference. The reference number should be added to the last word of the text, just before the formulation.

4) The scale bar should be added to Figure 6 (d)-(f).

Author Response

We appreciate the reviewer's kind reviews and comments.

Please see the attachment.

The modified manuscript had to be used the "Track Change" feature to make it easier for reviewers to see the modifications.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx