Deposition Volume Compensation for Enhanced Shape Fidelity in Nested Printing

Area of Science:

• Additive Manufacturing
• Biomedical Engineering
• Computational Geometry

Background:

• Nested printing enables complex multilayered structures, crucial for fabricating biological organ models.
• Shape fidelity is critical for the accuracy, integrity, and functionality of 3D-printed parts.
• Internal depositions in nested printing can compromise shape fidelity, an issue requiring effective mitigation.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop a B-spline function-based compensation method for addressing internal deposition volume effects in nested printing.
• To enhance the shape fidelity of internally nested structures fabricated via nested printing.

Main Methods:

• Utilized image-based segmentation and reconstruction to visualize printed nested structures.
• Assessed shape fidelity by comparing reconstructed models to designed models using 3D structural similarity analysis.
• Approximated distortion and compensation fields using a B-spline function-based method to generate a compensated 3D model.

Main Results:

• Reduced mean printing error from 9.35% to 2.02% for the first enclosing layer of a canonical nested structure.
• Significantly decreased mean printing error from 17.59% to 0.47% for the second enclosing layer.
• Demonstrated a reduction in mean printing error from 10.67% to 1.40% for the white matter region of a 3D brain limbic system model.

Conclusions:

• The B-spline function-based compensation method effectively mitigates distortions caused by internal deposition volumes.
• This strategy substantially enhances shape fidelity in nested printing, leading to more accurate and functional 3D-printed parts.
• The developed method shows significant promise for fabricating complex biological structures with high precision.