: We reduce the material of a 3D kitten (left), by carving porous in the solid (mid-left), to yield a honeycomb-like interior structure which provides an optimal strength-to-weight ratio, and relieves the overall stress illustrated on a cross-section (mid-right). The 3D printed hollowed solid is built-to-last using our interior structure (right). The emergence of low-cost 3D printers steers the investigation of new geometric problems that control the quality of the fabricated object. In this paper, we present a method to reduce the material cost and weight of a given object while providing a durable printed model that is resistant to impact and external forces. We introduce a hollowing optimization algorithm based on the concept of honeycomb-cells structure. Honeycombs structures are known to be of minimal material cost while providing strength in tension. We utilize the Voronoi diagram to compute irregular honeycomb-like volume tessellations which define the inner structure. We formulate our problem as a strength-to-weight optimization and cast it as mutually finding an optimal interior tessellation and its maximal hollowing subject to relieve the interior stress. Thus, our system allows to build-to-last 3D printed objects with large control over their strength-to-weight ratio and easily model various interior structures. We demonstrate our method on a collection of 3D objects from different categories. Furthermore, we evaluate our method by printing our hollowed models and measure their stress and weights.
Lu et al. REF introduce a hollowing optimization algorithm based on the concept of honeycombcells structure.
Build-to-last: strength to weight 3D printed objects
TOGS
Computer Science