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French Researchers Develop Algorithm to Generate Interior Ribbed Support Vaults for 3D Printed Hollow Objects https://ift.tt/2X5ufHq In 3D printing, every layer of material must be supported by the layer below it in order to form a solid object; when it comes to FFF 3D printing, material can only be deposited at points that are already receiving support from below. French researchers Thibault Tricard, Frédéric Claux, and Sylvain Lefebvre, from the Université de Limoges (UNILIM) and the Université de Lorraine, wanted to look at 3D printing hollow objects, and proposed a new method for hollowing in their paper “Ribbed support vaults for 3D printing of hollowed objects.”
While most people think of 3D printing supports as external ones that support overhanging parts of an object, the interior of an object may also need support structures.
Inner supports should occupy a small amount of space with the print cavity, and the impact on overall print time should be slight. Other researchers have contributed a variety of ideas in terms of support structures with 3D printed hollowed objects, including:
The researchers explained how to support a 3D object by “sweeping through its slices from top to bottom” and searching for any unsupported parts, then adding necessary material below them in the next slice; this material doesn’t need to cover the entire unsupported area, and can take any shape.
The team then explained their algorithm for ribbed support vault structures. The idea is to use three main operations to produce supports: propagating and reducing supports from the above slice, detecting areas that appear to be unsupported in the current slice, and adding the supports needed for it.
The team 3D printed a variety of PLA models with the same perimeters on different systems. Orange models were fabricated on an Ultimaker 3, while the yellow Moai was printed on an Ultimaker 2 and the octopus on a CR-10. A Prima P120 was used to make white models, the blue Buddha was printed on an eMotion Tech MicroDelta Rework, and a dual-color fawn was made on a Flashforge Creator Pro. The quality of these prints matches models with a dense infill, thanks to the full support property offered, and the algorithm generates multiple small segments that require individual printing, which led to many “retract/prime operations surrounding travels.”
The team also evaluated how much material their method needed, and compared this with materials used for iterative carving and support-free hollowing methods. They also noted how layer thickness impacted support size, and recorded processing times.
The researchers concluded that their algorithm ensures complete support of deposited material, which can be helpful for extruding viscous or heavy materials like concrete and clay. They believe that their method for 3D printing hollowed objects through generating ribbed internal support structures could one day lead to novel external support structures as well. Discuss this and other 3D printing topics at 3DPrintBoard.com or share your thoughts below. Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus.Printing via 3DPrint.com | The Voice of 3D Printing / Additive Manufacturing https://3dprint.com June 29, 2019 at 02:06AM
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