Abstract
AbstractThe support structures used in additive manufacturing (AM) techniques cause poor surface quality in the contact areas of the support with the printed parts. Thereby, this support structure usage is a critical issue that needs to be controlled for minimizing the printing time and post-processing challenges associated with AM parts. To alleviate the errors due to the support structures, these faceted models can be deposited in multi-direction using multi-axis systems. This paper presents an approach to decompose the design features and detect multiple build directions for certain cases of faceted models to print parts using multi-robots collaborative material extrusion (MRCME) systems developed by the authors. The use of support structures limits the surface finish of as-built 3D printed parts. The objective of this work is to develop a volume decomposition algorithm, which can decompose the part into sub-volumes and identify the build direction of the decomposed sub-volumes. The build direction is found from the geometric reasoning of the concave and convex loop centroids. Initial decomposition is done with the concave–convex loop pair relationship, and further regrouping is done with the bounding box of the identified pair of concave and convex loops in that particular build direction. The work presented in this paper would help process planning systems to automatically determine Multi-Directional Sub-Volumes (MDSV) and carry out effective part deposition with minimum or no support structures.KeywordsMulti-robots technologyMulti-axis depositionCobotic material extrusionPost-processing
Published Version
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