A Nozzle Path Planner for 3-D Printing Applications

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Abstract
Additive manufacturing technologies have been widely applied in both household and industrial applications. The fabrication time of a 3D printed object can be shortened by optimizing its segments printing order. The computational times required by existing nozzle path planning algorithms can increase rapidly with the number of printing segments. In this work, the nozzle path planning problem is formulated as an undirected rural postman problem (URPP) and a computationally efficient heuristic search algorithm is proposed to find fast routes and mitigate overheads in printing processes. Both simulation and experimental results concur that the proposed algorithm can significantly speed up printing processes and outperform its counterparts in 3D printing applications.
Funding Information
  • Hong Kong Polytechnic University
  • University of Western Australia
  • Department of Electronic and Information Engineering
  • School of Electrical, Electronic and Computer Engineering
  • Department of Manufacturing, Materials and Mechatronics, RMIT University
  • Department of Electrical Engineering, City University of Hong Kong

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