Optimal Motion Planning for Deposition in Layered Manufacturing

Abstract The quality of material produced by layered manufacturing (LM) is closely related to the topology and fairness of deposition paths. A poorly planned path often results in voids or gaps between adjacent passes or layers. However, there are virtually no solutions to producing a completely smooth, connected spiral path that fills entirely a given arbitrary cross-sectional geometry without overlapping. In this paper, we relax the constraints of cross-sectional shapes and propose a shape optimization algorithm based on its skeleton. The shape is optimized in a way that high-quality spiral deposition paths can be produced. The resulting paths are computed based on the geometry skeleton, instead of common recursive-offset algorithms.