Toward a Simple Design and Manufacturing Pipeline for Additive Manufacturing

Abstract

A novel design and manufacturing pipeline for Additive Manufacturing is presented. The architecture of the pipeline is motivated by the observation that the conventional pipeline is unnecessarily complex. Most of the time, only a small set of programming steps suffices for 3D design and manufacture. In particular, the proposed method requires no complex hardware or software, and it generates the geometric data on the fly. This is demonstrated using a simplified evaluation of general volumetric sweeps. The method side-steps many of the problems of the conventional Additive Manufacturing pipeline. Several scripts are provided that illustrate the capabilities and the advantages of the proposed approach. These scripts are processed on a single-board computer and the parts are manufactured on a Fused Filament Fabrication type of 3D printer.