Section: New Results

Curved Deposition

Participants : Sylvain Lefebvre, Jimmy Etienne.

This project continues in collaboration with the ALICE team.

We are pursuing a line of research around curved deposition. The objective is to go beyond the flat-layers currently used. Indeed, some processes would allow for deposition along curved paths, however this capability is rarely used: proofs of concept exist, but no general algorithm can generate curved paths given an input geometry.

There are several key potential advantages to curved deposition: reducing the constraints in terms of geometries that can be manufactured, achieving better mechanical properties (e.g., by aligning deposition with respect to a computed stress field), achieving better surface quality.

In this context, we achieved new results to reduce support material, in a joint project with Charlie C.L. Wang (TU Delft) [11]. The 3D printer is a 5-DOF robotic arm equipped with a standard FDM extruder. The algorithm we developed is based on a heuristic growth process within a discretized version of the model (voxels). The growth process attempts to place additional material where it is already supported from below, while avoiding cases where some unfinished parts of the model would become inaccessible due to collisions.

This led us to the first general algorithm for multi-axis 3D printing. It produces tool-paths that allow the robotic arm to fabricate most parts without any support, while avoiding collisions. Many challenges remain, both related to geometry and robotics, and we are pursuing this collaboration, jointly with Nicolas Ray (ALICE-Inria).