Two-Scale Lofted Surfaces Modeling for Ceramic 3D Printing

Considering the characteristics of extrusion-based ceramic 3 D printing,a lightweight interactive two-scale modeling and manufacturing tool based on lofted surfaces is proposed.Given two closed curves input by the user,it first performs interpolation between the two curves,generates the intermediate points,and automatically modulates the shape to satisfy the constraints of ceramic 3 D printing,including self-supporting and collision-free during fabrication.Then the line between intermediate points is replaced with the predefined periodic curve and the curve’s period and amplitude are adjusted to synthesize geometric textures.Finally,intermediate points are connected on each section layer by layer to obtain a single continuous spiral printing path.The proposed modeling method is evaluated on three groups of curves and solid objects fabricated by the CERAMBOT Plus 3 D printer.Experimental results show that the proposed modeling tool provides users with sufficient modeling space,which can effectively model lofted surfaces with geometric textures and generate the printing G-code files for ceramic 3 D printing reliably.