Patent ID: 8634948
Filing Date: 2014-01-21
Classification: B33Y,G05B,G06Q,Y02P

Abstract:
1. A method of volume manufacturing customized items, comprising: (a) providing a fabrication data package including a plurality of manufacturing parameters, each of the plurality of manufacturing parameters defining three-dimensional shape data representing a series of customized items; (b) providing a plurality of fabrication terminals, each of the fabrication terminals being operable to perform at least one manufacturing routine using one or more of the manufacturing parameters; (c) implementing a manufacturing process to create the series of customized items based on the manufacturing parameters, the manufacturing process including (1) parsing the fabrication data package into a plurality of processing data batches, each of the processing data batches including manufacturing data representing at least one manufacturing routine, (2) for each of the processing data batches, designating at least one of the fabrication terminals as being operable to perform each of the manufacturing routines represented by the manufacturing data in that processing data batch, and (3) transmitting each of the processing data batches to a designated fabrication terminal that has been designated as being operable to perform the at least one manufacturing routine represented by the manufacturing data in each of the processing data batches received by the designated fabrication terminal, thereby to initiate the execution of the one or more manufacturing routines represented by the manufacturing data in each of the processing data batches received by the designated fabrication terminal, wherein each designated fabrication terminal is configured to convert each received processing data batch into one or more object files corresponding to the at least one manufacturing routine that the designated fabrication terminal is operable to perform, each of the object files including a three-dimensional object data set that corresponds to one of the series of customized items; (d) determining an optimized tray layout based on the three-dimensional object data set; and (e) generating a tray object data file based on the optimized tray layout, wherein the tray object data file represents a physical layout of a plurality of the customized items on a tray after fabrication of the items on the tray.