Radial slicing for helical-shaped advanced manufacturing applications
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ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Radial slicing for helical-shaped advanced manufacturing applications Nuwan Munasinghe1
· Gavin Paul1
Received: 6 May 2020 / Accepted: 25 August 2020 © Springer-Verlag London Ltd., part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract The fourth industrial revolution (Industry 4.0) is transforming industries all around the world focusing on areas including advanced robotics and automation, sensor technology and data analytics. The authors are involved in a project developing a multi-robot material extrusion 3D printer to print a gravity separation spiral (GSS), an instrument used in the mining industry to separate mineral slurry into different density components. Compared with traditional mould-based manufacturing, this new additive manufacturing method will significantly reduce manufacturing tooling costs, improve the customisation to enable the production of bespoke GSS that each processes different minerals and reduce worker exposure to hazardous materials. Slicing and printing large-scale helical objects in conventional horizontal layer addition would result in an unreasonable amount of waste material from support structures, and poor surface quality due to step-wise bumps. This paper presents a novel slicing algorithm using concentric vertical ray lines to slice objects radially, enabling layers to be deposited progressively in the same fashion. This method can be applied in large-scale additive manufacturing where objects are printed by a robot in a radial direction, which is different from layered vertical printing in conventional additive systems. An example GSS is sliced to generate motion plans for a print head affixed to the end effector of a robot arm. Then through simulations, it is shown how a robot’s expected manipulability measure can be used to predict and ensure the successful completion of the print. Keywords Advanced manufacturing · Additive manufacturing · 3D printing · Slicing algorithm · Manipulability
1 Introduction Additive manufacturing (AM), commonly known as 3D printing, is the process of depositing material layer by layer to form a physical realisation of a 3D computer model, as opposed to subtractive and formative manufacturing methods [17]. AM continues to evolve from just a useful rapid
This research is supported by UTS, in particular, Rapido; The Commonwealth of Australia’s Department of Industry, Innovation and Science (Innovative Manufacturing CRC Ltd); and Downer, via its subsidiary Mineral Technologies. Nuwan Munasinghe
[email protected] Gavin Paul [email protected] 1
Centre for Autonomous Systems, University of Technology Sydney, Ultimo, Australia
prototyping tool to one where final end-product manufacturing is possible [36]. Therefore, different industries such as construction and medicine are increasingly embracing this technology [4, 8, 30]. The mining industry in Australia is looking to integrate AM to overcome inherent drawbacks in traditional manufacturing. To this end, a research and development project is underway to create a material extrusion
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