: 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.
REF optimize the positions of the point sites of a Voronoi diagram to strengthen an object.
Build-to-last: strength to weight 3D printed objects
TOGS
Computer Science