Toolpath planning process for conductive materials
A method of generating a tool path for an additive manufacturing process, the tool path having an input polygon for a thick region, and an input path for a wire region. The method includes offsetting the input polygon by a minimum step over distance, creating a set of contour parallel offset lines, computing path segments from a medial axis transform of the input polygon, computing a dilation of the medial axis path by a radius approximately half the step over distance, producing a dilated medial axis, clipping the contour parallel offset paths by the medial axis path, producing, and recursively connect the medial axis paths with the clipped contour parallel paths.
1. A computer-implemented method of generating a tool path for an additive manufacturing process, the tool path having an input polygon for a thick region, and an input path for a wire region, the method comprising:
offsetting the input polygon by a minimum step over distance, creating a set of contour parallel offset lines;
computing path segments from a medial axis transform of the input polygon;
computing a dilation of the medial axis path by a radius approximately half the step over distance, producing a dilated medial axis;
clipping the contour parallel offset paths by the medial axis path, producing clipped contour parallel paths; and
recursively connect the medial axis paths with the clipped contour parallel paths.
2. The computer-implemented method of claim 1 , wherein the tool path forms a zig-zag pattern.
3. The computer-implemented method of claim 1 , wherein the tool path forms a contour spiral pattern.
4. The computer-implemented method of claim 3 , wherein clipping the contour parallel offset paths comprises:
identifying which contour parallel offset paths are contained within other contour parallel paths; and
creating a tree structure out of the contour parallel paths such that a given path is identified as a child of another path if all vertices and edges are contained within a parent path.
5. The computer-implemented method of claim 4 , further comprising:
creating a line between edges of each loop in the tree structure to a highest grandparent to create nested loops;
dilating the edge; and
clipping the nested loops.
6. The computer-implemented method of claim 5 , further comprising connecting paths that lie in a same direction to form a spiraling pattern.
7. The computer-implemented method of claim 6 , further comprising clipping the spiraling pattern by a dilated medial axis path and connecting nearest neighbor paths.
8. The computer-implemented method of claim 1 , wherein computing path segments from the medial axis transform comprises:
skipping medial axis edges that touch a region boundary; and
keeping portions of the medial axis edges the meet a minimum distance requirement.
9. The computer-implemented method of claim 1 , wherein recursively connecting the medial axis paths comprises:
only connecting paths that are within a threshold distance of each other;
only connecting paths between vertices that do not already have a connection; and
only connecting paths that have orientations in opposite directions.
10. A computer-implemented method of generating a zig-zag tool path for an additive manufacturing process, the tool path having an input polygon for a thick region, and an input path for a wire region, the method comprising:
offsetting the input polygon by a minimum step over distance, creating a set of contour parallel offset lines;
computing path segments from a medial axis transform of the input polygon;
computing a dilation of the medial axis path by a radius approximately half the step over distance, producing a dilated medial axis;
connecting paths that lie in a same direction to form a spiraling pattern;
clipping the contour parallel offset paths by the medial axis path, producing clipped contour parallel paths; and
recursively connecting the medial axis paths with the clipped contour parallel paths.
11. A computer-implemented method of generating a contour parallel tool path for an additive manufacturing process, the tool path having an input polygon for a thick region, and an input path for a wire region, the method comprising:
offsetting the input polygon by a minimum step over distance, creating a set of contour parallel offset lines;
computing path segments from a medial axis transform of the input polygon;
computing a dilation of the medial axis path by a radius approximately half the step over distance, producing a dilated medial axis;
clipping the contour parallel offset paths by the medial axis path, producing clipped contour parallel paths; and
recursively connecting the medial axis paths with the clipped contour parallel paths such that only paths that are within a threshold distance of each other are connected.
12. The computer-implemented method of claim 11 , wherein recursively connecting the medial axis paths comprising:
only connecting paths between vertices that do not already have a connection; and
only connecting paths that have orientations in opposite directions.