Orientable Dense Cyclic Infill for Anisotropic Appearance Fabrication

Abstract

We present a method to 3D print surfaces exhibiting a prescribed varying field of anisotropic appearance using only standard fused filament fabrication printers. This enables the fabrication of patterns triggering reflections similar to that of brushed metal with direct control over the directionality of the reflections. Our key insight, on which we ground the method, is that the direction of the deposition paths leads to a certain degree of surface roughness, which yields a visual anisotropic appearance. Therefore, generating dense cyclic infills aligned with a line field allows us to grade the anisotropic appearance of the printed surface. To achieve this, we introduce a highly parallelizable algorithm for optimizing oriented, cyclic paths. Our algorithm outperforms existing approaches regarding efficiency, robustness, and result quality. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our technique in conveying an anisotropic appearance on several challenging test cases, ranging from patterns to photographs reinterpreted as anisotropic appearances.

3D Printing of Flow‐Inspired Anisotropic Patterns with Liquid Crystalline Polymers

“…[59] One could even obtain different renderings using our patterning method, with other anisotropic properties such as structural colors [60] or birefringence. [22,61] Further, integrating the concept of turbulences into solid objects opens routes for materials with new functionalities, such as the shaping of eddy currents [62] via conductive anisotropic polymers.…”

“…The characteristic of this approach, beyond its mathematical elegance, is to produce multiple smooth individual paths instead of one tortuous cyclic path that is generally shown for single continuous motion approaches. [19][20][21][22][23][24][25] Recently, evenly distributed streamlines [26] were generated for printed paths of fixed width following principal stress directions. Studies using streamlines have mainly focused on computing toolpath location for fibers flowing around a hole based on the potential flow functions describing flow around a cylinder, [27][28][29] akin to the microstructure of wood around a knot.…”