A continues multi-material toolpath planning for tissue scaffolds with hollowed features

Official URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.3722/cadaps.2011.237-247

This paper presents a new multi-material based toolpath planning methodology for porous tissue scaffolds with multiple hollowed features. Ruled surface with hollowed features generated in our earlier work is used to develop toolpath planning. Ruling lines are reoriented to enable continuous and uniform size multi-material printing through them in two steps. Firstly, all ruling lines are matched and connected to eliminate start and stops during printing. Then, regions with high number of ruling lines are relaxed using a relaxation technique to eliminate over deposition. A novel layer-by-layer deposition process is progressed in two consecutive layers: The first layer with hollow shape based zigzag pattern and the next layer with spiral pattern deposition. Heterogeneous material properties are mapped based on the parametric distances from the hollow features.