Delta DLP 3-D printing of large models

This paper presents a 3-D printing system that uses a low-cost off-the-shelf consumer projector to fabricate large models. Compared with traditional digital light processing (DLP) 3-D printers using a single vertical carriage, the platform of our DLP 3-D printer using delta mechanism can also move h...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Yi, Ran, Wu, Chenming, Liu, Yong-Jin, He, Ying, Wang, Charlie C. L.
Other Authors: School of Computer Science and Engineering
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: 2020
Subjects:
Online Access:https://hdl.handle.net/10356/140170
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Institution: Nanyang Technological University
Language: English
id sg-ntu-dr.10356-140170
record_format dspace
spelling sg-ntu-dr.10356-1401702020-05-27T03:52:37Z Delta DLP 3-D printing of large models Yi, Ran Wu, Chenming Liu, Yong-Jin He, Ying Wang, Charlie C. L. School of Computer Science and Engineering Engineering::Computer science and engineering Manufacturing Mechanisms This paper presents a 3-D printing system that uses a low-cost off-the-shelf consumer projector to fabricate large models. Compared with traditional digital light processing (DLP) 3-D printers using a single vertical carriage, the platform of our DLP 3-D printer using delta mechanism can also move horizontally in the plane. We show that this system can print 3-D models much larger than traditional DLP 3-D printers. The major challenge to realize 3-D printing of large models in our system comes from how to cover a planar polygonal domain by a minimum number of rectangles with fixed size, which is NP-hard. We propose a simple yet efficient approximation algorithm to solve this problem. The key idea is to segment a polygonal domain using its medial axis and afterward merge small parts in the segmentation. Given an arbitrary polygon Ω with n generators (i.e., line segments and reflex vertices in Ω), we show that the time complexity of our algorithm is O(n22n) and the number of output rectangles covering Ω is O(Kn) , where K is an input-polygon-dependent constant. A physical prototype system is built and several large 3-D models with complex geometric structures have been printed as examples to demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach. Note to Practitioners - Low-cost 3-D printers and 3-D printing of large models are two important but often conflicting goals in manufacturing industry. Usually low-cost devices such as DLP 3-D printer using an off-the-shelf consumer projector cannot print large models, due to the small projection area of the projector. In this paper, we propose to horizontally move the platform such that a large area can be printed by the composition of multiple small projection areas. Based on this new mechanism, we propose a simple yet efficient algorithm to cover an arbitrary polygonal shape (possibly with holes or multiple disjoint polygons) by a small set of rectangles with fixed size. Our algorithm is theoretically sound and can be easily implemented. We built a physical prototype system of the proposed low-cost Delta DLP 3-D printer, which successfully prints several large models with satisfied mechanical properties. 2020-05-27T03:52:36Z 2020-05-27T03:52:36Z 2017 Journal Article Yi, R., Wu, C., Liu, Y.-J., He, Y., & Wang, C. C. L. (2018). Delta DLP 3-D printing of large models. IEEE Transactions on Automation Science and Engineering, 15(3), 1193-1204. doi:10.1109/TASE.2017.2751664 1545-5955 https://hdl.handle.net/10356/140170 10.1109/TASE.2017.2751664 2-s2.0-85030791304 3 15 1193 1204 en IEEE Transactions on Automation Science and Engineering © 2017 IEEE. All rights reserved.
institution Nanyang Technological University
building NTU Library
country Singapore
collection DR-NTU
language English
topic Engineering::Computer science and engineering
Manufacturing
Mechanisms
spellingShingle Engineering::Computer science and engineering
Manufacturing
Mechanisms
Yi, Ran
Wu, Chenming
Liu, Yong-Jin
He, Ying
Wang, Charlie C. L.
Delta DLP 3-D printing of large models
description This paper presents a 3-D printing system that uses a low-cost off-the-shelf consumer projector to fabricate large models. Compared with traditional digital light processing (DLP) 3-D printers using a single vertical carriage, the platform of our DLP 3-D printer using delta mechanism can also move horizontally in the plane. We show that this system can print 3-D models much larger than traditional DLP 3-D printers. The major challenge to realize 3-D printing of large models in our system comes from how to cover a planar polygonal domain by a minimum number of rectangles with fixed size, which is NP-hard. We propose a simple yet efficient approximation algorithm to solve this problem. The key idea is to segment a polygonal domain using its medial axis and afterward merge small parts in the segmentation. Given an arbitrary polygon Ω with n generators (i.e., line segments and reflex vertices in Ω), we show that the time complexity of our algorithm is O(n22n) and the number of output rectangles covering Ω is O(Kn) , where K is an input-polygon-dependent constant. A physical prototype system is built and several large 3-D models with complex geometric structures have been printed as examples to demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach. Note to Practitioners - Low-cost 3-D printers and 3-D printing of large models are two important but often conflicting goals in manufacturing industry. Usually low-cost devices such as DLP 3-D printer using an off-the-shelf consumer projector cannot print large models, due to the small projection area of the projector. In this paper, we propose to horizontally move the platform such that a large area can be printed by the composition of multiple small projection areas. Based on this new mechanism, we propose a simple yet efficient algorithm to cover an arbitrary polygonal shape (possibly with holes or multiple disjoint polygons) by a small set of rectangles with fixed size. Our algorithm is theoretically sound and can be easily implemented. We built a physical prototype system of the proposed low-cost Delta DLP 3-D printer, which successfully prints several large models with satisfied mechanical properties.
author2 School of Computer Science and Engineering
author_facet School of Computer Science and Engineering
Yi, Ran
Wu, Chenming
Liu, Yong-Jin
He, Ying
Wang, Charlie C. L.
format Article
author Yi, Ran
Wu, Chenming
Liu, Yong-Jin
He, Ying
Wang, Charlie C. L.
author_sort Yi, Ran
title Delta DLP 3-D printing of large models
title_short Delta DLP 3-D printing of large models
title_full Delta DLP 3-D printing of large models
title_fullStr Delta DLP 3-D printing of large models
title_full_unstemmed Delta DLP 3-D printing of large models
title_sort delta dlp 3-d printing of large models
publishDate 2020
url https://hdl.handle.net/10356/140170
_version_ 1681057764332273664