Melt extrusion and laydown of polymer within the FDM process is common practice but little is understood about laydown of polymer in relation to melt flow and die swell. This paper takes a standard 0.4 mm FDM nozzle and stepper motor controlled extruder setup and studies the laydown and extrusion techniques associated with FDM through high-speed camera work (Fig 1) and advanced data analysis techniques. Custom software has been created in order to measure and control extrusion speed, pressure and temperature with a view to linking laydown width and depth during single path extrusion to process settings. Higher rates of polymer extrusion speeds (335 mm/min) increased (Fig 2) die swell which must be considered in order to control path width during the manufacturing process preventing manufacturing issues such as negative gap width and model overfill.