Layer path updating algorithm based on Voronoi diagrams for material extrusion additive manufacturing

Abstract

In Material Extrusion (MEX) types of Additive Manufacturing (AM) technologies, the continuity of the trajectories affects the surface quality of the artifacts manufactured and the time of fabrication. Continuous paths result in lower surface roughness values and lower fabrication times. AM machines employing MEX technologies have the flexibility to fill the interior of objects with regular or irregular patterns to serve various applications. Any of these infill patterns can be modelled with 3D Voronoi diagrams. Therefore, developing a continuous path planning algorithm based on Voronoi diagrams would increase the flexibility of the approach. Accompanied with an encryption method, the proposed approach can represent the motion trajectories of the extruder head in a compact manner, decreasing file sizes representing them. Based on the results of various test cases, the proposed approach improves surface quality, decreases fabrication time and the size of the manufacturing files