Methods and apparatus for controlling motion of an articulated robot
An article of manufacture is disclosed that is formed by jointly controlling a printhead and a worktable to provide three dimensional printing and insuring every point in a three dimensional print volume can be reached. Similarly, systems and methods are described to extend robot reach by coordinating robot and worktable control.
1. An article of manufacture formed by three dimensional printing utilizing a controllable print head which prints lengths of fiber reinforced filament along a toolpath to form the article, wherein the toolpath is generated by a process comprising:
utilizing computer aided design software to represent part geometry in a standard language file, wherein the standard language file is a standard triangle or tessellation language (STI) file providing all necessary geometric information to slice the article into layers;
utilizing slicing software to take the standard language file and slice the article into layers of toolpath;
for each layer of toolpath, generating a sequence of points defining a toolpath in a Gcode file;
converting the Gcode file to an alternate Gcode file that eliminates rotation about at least one axis of rotation of a robot controlling movement of the print head and adds work table control code to control rotation of a work table;
converting the alternate Gcode file to a text file the robot can interpret to execute motion and input/output (IO) commands to control print head travel; and
utilizing the alternate Gcode file to control the work table to rotate in a manner ensuring the toolpath points that are required to make the article are reachable.
2. The article of manufacture of claim 1 wherein a shortest angle is computed from among (i) a first angle that corresponds to a first angular route and (ii) a second angle that corresponds to a second angular route, and to ensure the work table takes a shortest angular route to reach a next angle of rotation to ensure a subsequent toolpath point is reachable.
3. The article of manufacture of claim 1 wherein the process is repeated for the sequence of points.
4. A method of printing a three dimensional article fabricated from a series of additive material runs, utilizing a, print head, the additive material runs comprising lengths of fiber reinforced filament, the method comprising:
representing geometry of the article in a standard language file, wherein the standard language file is a standard triangle or tessellation language (STL) file providing all necessary geometric information to slice the article into layers;
slicing the article represented in the standard language file into layers of toolpath;
generating a sequence of points defining a toolpath in a Gcode file, for each layer of toolpath;
converting the Gcode file to an alternate Gcode file that eliminates rotation about at least one axis of rotation of a robot controlling movement of the print head and adds work table control code to control rotation of a work table;
converting the alternate Gcode file to a text file the robot can interpret to execute motion and input/output (IO) commands to control print head travel;
eliminating the rotation about the at least one axis of rotation; and,
controlling, using the alternate Gcode file, the rotation of the work table in a manner ensuring the toolpath points required to make the article are reachable.
5. The method of claim 4 wherein the representing step is performed utilizing computer-aided design software.
6. The method of claim 4 wherein the slicing step is performed utilizing slicing software to operate on the standard language file.
7. The method of claim 4 wherein the alternate Gcode file contains commands to control the work table.