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Helical tool path generation based on the triangle mesh model for a rotary four-DOF 3D printer

Donghua Zhao (State Key Laboratory of Mechanical System and Vibration, School of Mechanical Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China)
Jiapeng He (State Key Laboratory of Mechanical System and Vibration, School of Mechanical Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China)
Gaohan Zhu (State Key Laboratory of Mechanical System and Vibration, School of Mechanical Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China)
Youcheng Han (State Key Laboratory of Mechanical System and Vibration, School of Mechanical Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China)
Weizhong Guo (State Key Laboratory of Mechanical System and Vibration, School of Mechanical Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China)

Rapid Prototyping Journal

ISSN: 1355-2546

Article publication date: 20 October 2022

Issue publication date: 4 April 2023

229

Abstract

Purpose

The rapid development of three-dimensional (3D) printing makes it familiar in daily life, especially the fused deposition modeling 3D printers. The process planning of traditional flat layer printing includes slicing and path planning to obtain the boundaries and the filling paths for each layer along the vertical direction. There is a clear division line through the whole fabricated part, inherited in the flat-layer-based printed parts. This problem is brought about by the seam of the boundary in each layer. Hence, the purpose of this paper is to propose a novel helical filling path generation with the ideal surface-plane intersection for a rotary 3D printer.

Design/methodology/approach

The detailed algorithm and implementation steps are given with several worked examples to enable readers to understand it better. The adjacent points obtained from the planar slicing are combined to generate each layer's helical points. The contours of all layers are traversed to obtain the helical surface layer and helical path. Meanwhile, the novel rotary four-degree of freedom 3D printer is briefly introduced.

Findings

As a proof of concept, this paper presents several examples based on the rotary 3D printer designed in the authors’ previous research and the algorithms illustrated in this paper. The preliminary experiments successfully verify the feasibility and versatility of the proposed slicing method based on a rotary 3D printer.

Originality/value

This paper provides a novel and feasible slicing method for multi-axis rotary 3D printers, making manufacturing thin-wall and complex parts possible. To further broaden the proposed slicing method’s application in further research, adaptive tool path generation for flat and curved layer printing could be applied with a combination of flat and curved layers in the same layer, different layers or even different parts of structures.

Keywords

Acknowledgements

This work is partially supported by the State Key Lab of Mechanical System and Vibration Project (Grant Number MSVZD202008).

Citation

Zhao, D., He, J., Zhu, G., Han, Y. and Guo, W. (2023), "Helical tool path generation based on the triangle mesh model for a rotary four-DOF 3D printer", Rapid Prototyping Journal, Vol. 29 No. 4, pp. 709-719. https://doi.org/10.1108/RPJ-03-2022-0091

Publisher

:

Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2022, Emerald Publishing Limited

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