Rapid improvements in 3D printing technology bring about new possibilities to print with different types of printing materials. New studies have investigated and presented various printing methodologies. However, the majority of these studies are targeted at experimenting with rigid 3D printed objects rather than soft 3D printed fabrications. The presented research considers soft 3D printing, particularly focusing on the development of flexible patterns based on non-homogenous hybrid honeycombs for the interior of 3D printed objects to improve their flexibility and additional stretchability including the lightweight interior. After decomposing the area of an object into regions, our method creates a specific design where patterns are positioned at each partitioned region of the object area by connecting opposite sides of the boundary. The number of regions is determined according to application requirements or by user demands. The current study provides the results of conducted experiments. The aim of this research is to create flexible, stretchable, and lightweight soft 3D printed objects by exploring their deformation responses under tension, compression and flexure tests. This method generates soft 3D printed fabrications with physical properties that meet user demands.

This article presents a multilevel design for infill patterns. The method partitions an input model into subareas and each subarea are applied with different scales of infill patterns. The number of subareas can be decided by users. For each subarea, there are different values of the scaling parameter that determines the number of columns and rows of pattern elements, which is useful to change the weight and strength of a certain area by user demands. Subareas can be symmetric or asymmetric to each other depending on the geometry of a 3D model and the application requirements. In each subarea, there are generated symmetric patterns. The proposed method is also applicable to combining different patterns. The aim of our work is to create lightweight 3D fabrications with lighter interior structures to minimize printing materials and supplementary to strengthen thin parts of objects. Our approach allows for the composition of sparse and dense distributions of patterns of interior 3D fabrications in an efficient way so users can fabricate their own 3D designs.

Existing studies on infill patterns have tended to focus on pattern design rather than on geometric parameters. During this study, we propose a new controlling method focused specifically on the geometric parameters of infill patterns. The input parameters of this method can be used to create 3D printed objects with more lightweight interiors. The presented approach partitions a region of an object with user-specified distance inputs that are used to create infill pattern elements. Moreover, the proposed method will enable the generation of new design variations derived from a single pattern type with similar topologies and varying geometric parameters. The hexagonal pattern variations comprising regular and irregular elements have been presented. The variations of infill pattern design are useful for creating more lightweight and stronger 3D fabrications. The proposed approach is applicable for many different patterns, including linear pattern designs. The goal of this study is to devise a more cost-effective method of creating 3D-printed objects through the application of customizable infill patterns.

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