An Intelligent Identification and Repair Method for Annular Holes in 3D Printing

With the popularization of 3D printing in the consumer goods field, there is a specific type of hole named annular hole in the narrow features, surface bumps, or folded parts of products. The traditional triangular mesh repair method is not effective for such holes. The structural characteristics of the annular hole are analyzed in this research, and the definition and identification method for annular holes is presented through the shape and position relationship of two closed hole lines. To improve the repair efficiency and the applicability of the algorithm, the traditional hole repair method and process are ameliorated. A repair strategy of hole boundary stitching and filling, triangulation optimization, implicit surface construction based on Radial Basis Function, and surface integral deformation is adopted to achieve a smooth joint of the repaired hole surface with the original triangular mesh surface. The method can ensure surface smoothness and accuracy. Finally, two experiments are carried out to verify the repair quality and efficiency of our method. Compared with Geomagic software, the proposed method can automatically identify and repair annular holes with fewer defects and similar efficiency. Compared with a traditional hole repair method, the evaluation results demonstrate that the proposed method is much faster, and the repair quality is higher without the influences of human operations. It is shown that our method can be applied to annular hole repair of 3D printing models without the participation of technicians.