Cost-effective printing of 3D objects with skin-frame structures

3D printers have become popular in recent years and enable fabrication of custom objects for home users. However, the cost of the material used in printing remains high. In this paper, we present an automatic solution to design a skin-frame structure for the purpose of reducing the material cost in printing a given 3D object. The frame structure is designed by an optimization scheme which significantly reduces material volume and is guaranteed to be physically stable, geometrically approximate, and printable. Furthermore, the number of struts is minimized by solving an l0 sparsity optimization. We formulate it as a multi-objective programming problem and an iterative extension of the preemptive algorithm is developed to find a compromise solution. We demonstrate the applicability and practicability of our solution by printing various objects using both powder-type and extrusion-type 3D printers. Our method is shown to be more cost-effective than previous works.

[1]  Stephen J. Wright,et al.  Numerical Optimization , 2018, Fundamental Statistical Inference.

[2]  Dong-Ming Yan,et al.  Isotropic Remeshing with Fast and Exact Computation of Restricted Voronoi Diagram , 2009, Comput. Graph. Forum.

[3]  David W. Rosen,et al.  PARAMETRIC MODELING METHOD FOR TRUSS STRUCTURES , 2002 .

[4]  Jan Kautz,et al.  3D-printing of non-assembly, articulated models , 2012, ACM Trans. Graph..

[5]  Jessica K. Hodgins,et al.  Pixar Animation Studios , 2003 .

[6]  Sylvain Lefebvre,et al.  Make it stand , 2013, ACM Trans. Graph..

[7]  Yong Chen,et al.  3D Texture Mapping for Rapid Manufacturing , 2007 .

[8]  Doug L. James,et al.  Fabricating articulated characters from skinned meshes , 2012, ACM Trans. Graph..

[9]  Uri Kirsch,et al.  Optimal Topologies of Structures , 1989 .

[10]  Sunil Arya,et al.  An optimal algorithm for approximate nearest neighbor searching fixed dimensions , 1998, JACM.

[11]  David William Rosen,et al.  DESIGN OF GENERAL LATTICE STRUCTURES FOR LIGHTWEIGHT AND COMPLIANCE APPLICATIONS , 2006 .

[12]  M. Bendsøe,et al.  Topology Optimization: "Theory, Methods, And Applications" , 2011 .

[13]  Denis Zorin,et al.  Worst-case structural analysis , 2013, ACM Trans. Graph..

[14]  Gengdong Cheng,et al.  Some aspects of truss topology optimization , 1995 .

[15]  SmithJeffrey,et al.  Creating models of truss structures with optimization , 2002 .

[16]  M. Bendsøe,et al.  Optimization methods for truss geometry and topology design , 1994 .

[17]  Wojciech Matusik,et al.  Spec2Fab , 2013, ACM Trans. Graph..

[18]  Wojciech Matusik,et al.  Chopper: partitioning models into 3D-printable parts , 2012, ACM Trans. Graph..

[19]  Gabriel Taubin,et al.  A signal processing approach to fair surface design , 1995, SIGGRAPH.

[20]  David W. Rosen,et al.  A HYBRID GEOMETRIC MODELING METHOD FOR LARGE SCALE CONFORMAL CELLULAR STRUCTURES , 2005 .

[21]  D K Smith,et al.  Numerical Optimization , 2001, J. Oper. Res. Soc..

[22]  Radomír Mech,et al.  Stress relief , 2012, ACM Trans. Graph..

[23]  Joan Horvath.  The Desktop 3D Printer , 2014 .

[24]  S. Rajeev,et al.  Closure to “Genetic Algorithms‐Based Methodologies for Design Optimization of Trusses” by S. Rajeev and C. S. Krishnamoorthy , 1998 .

[25]  M. Wolcott.  Cellular solids: Structure and properties , 1990 .