CrossFill: Foam Structures with Graded Density for Continuous Material Extrusion

Kuipers, T.; Wu, J.; Wang, C.C.

doi:10.1016/j.cad.2019.05.003

CrossFill

Title

CrossFill: Foam Structures with Graded Density for Continuous Material Extrusion

Author

Kuipers, T. (TU Delft Materials and Manufacturing; Ultimaker)
Wu, J. (TU Delft Materials and Manufacturing)
Wang, C.C. (The Chinese University of Hong Kong)

Date

2019

Abstract

The fabrication flexibility of 3D printing has sparked a lot of interest in designing structures with spatially graded material properties. In this paper, we propose a new type of density graded structure that is particularly designed for 3D printing systems based on filament extrusion. In order to ensure high-quality fabrication results, extrusion-based 3D printing requires not only that the structures are self-supporting, but also that extrusion toolpaths are continuous and free of self-overlap. The structure proposed in this paper, called CrossFill, complies with these requirements. In particular, CrossFill is a self-supporting foam structure, for which each layer is fabricated by a single, continuous and overlap-free path of material extrusion. Our method for generating CrossFill is based on a space-filling surface that employs spatially varying subdivision levels. Dithering of the subdivision levels is performed to accurately reproduce a prescribed density distribution. We demonstrate the effectiveness of CrossFill on a number of experimental tests and applications.

Subject

Space-filling surface
Graded density
Continuous material extrusion
Functionally graded material
Fused deposition modeling

To reference this document use:

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:156d1eb2-bb3b-4566-9b3d-6000dddbf548

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cad.2019.05.003

Embargo date

2021-06-11

ISSN

0010-4485

Source

Computer-Aided Design, 114, 37-50