Voxel-based virtual manufacturing simulation for three-dimensional printing

Abstract

This article presents a simulation program for previewing and emulating three-dimensional printing. The proposed simulator adopts a voxel-based virtual manufacturing approach to fabricate the target model in a virtual volume space. A mass-diffusion procedure coupling with adaptive filament deposition is used to generate the printing roads of the virtual manufacturing model. Thus, the resultant virtual model resembles the printed object better. As the virtual model has been built, the simulator performs line-drawing, animation and volume rendering to reveal the progression of the printing and the geometric features of the model, including its outer appearance, surface roughness and internal structures. Hence, more geometrical features of the model are shown. During the virtual manufacturing process, semantic error checking is also carried out to detect potential printing errors which may cause supporting problems, collisions, overand under-extrusion, and other printing failures. Two efficient algorithms, using three rasters of voxels, are developed to conduct the kernel computations such that the run-time semantic error checking is simplified and the memory usage is reduced. Equipped with advanced modelling, debugging and graphics techniques, the proposed simulator can be used as a virtual three-dimensional printer as well as a debugger in additive manufacturing procedures. Users can utilize it to preview the resultant model and to evaluate the printing process such that potential errors can be prevented and the quality of the printed parts can be enhanced.

A systematic review of voxelization method in additive manufacturing

“…QC5 Are the analytical results provided? 1 0.5 0.5 0.5 0 2.5 [28] 0.5 0.5 0.5 0.5 0.5 2.5 [29] 0.5 0.5 0.5 1 0 2.5 [30] 0.5 0.5 0.5 0 0.5 2 [31] 0.5 0.5 1 0 0 2 [32] 1 0.5 0 0 0.5 2 [33] 0.5 0 0.5 0 0.5 1.5 clear and relevant documents, some quality criteria have been defined, based on the approach reported by [8], and applied to all the resulting 25 documents. These quality criteria (QC), which are answer to questions related to the quality and relevance of the papers, have been collected in Table 2.…”

“…The authors [28] design a virtual 3D manufacturing simulator in order to decrease printing and semantic errors. The algorithm prevents over-or under-extrusion and minimizes manufacturing errors.…”

“…The porosity is defined as the void space divided by the whole volume, and the filament spacing is obtained from the pixel intensity value previously acquired from CT images. [28] develops a framework to preview printing process whose aim is to find and correct syntax and semantic errors. All the printing information are contained in the G-code file which is the input of the simulator for virtual manufacturing, but also the basis for code debugging and fixing of possible errors.…”

“…In [11,20] this technology is used as a basis for the simulation process framework, due to wide number of users and its enormous number of applications. In [28], where a Virtual Manufacturing simulator is developed, FDM technology is used because it holds the largest market share and many research results are available in literature. Deposition of fused plastic is also used in large 3D objects as in [19] to produce a Panton chair with complex inner geometry (Fig.…”

“…OpenCL is a standard for cross-platform, parallel programming of multi-processor boards found in personal computers, servers, mobile devices and embedded platforms (source: https://www.khronos.org/opencl/). In combination with C programming language, this programming standard is used as software platform for the 3D virtual manufacturing simulator described in [28,29]. Moreover, [30] uses OpenCL for procedural foam implementation as a kernel to process each foam slice.…”