Team members
Nathan Rowe
Ricardo Ponce
Description
We will create (2-3) different 2D and 3D infill patterns that are not yet implemented in CURA that has documentation of their structural properties based on real world applications, generating a lattice like structure within the boundaries of an arbitrary shape. We want to know the minimum infill required while retaining the structurally integrity of larger infill patterns. For example, the trapezoid shape provides structural integrity while also reducing quantity.
We will compare these new generated infill patterns with existing patterns and evaluate them in difference of speed, filament waste (density), and strength. Speed will be determined by the comparing the time to existing infill patterns with the same density. Filament waste will be determined by the weight of the pattern generated. Strength will be determined by the “popsicle bridge test”. Where every pattern will be printed to the same shape and infill density and will be tested to see at what point them fail. The given pattern will be subjective to increasing amounts of vertical stress until failure (or until we run out of weight).
We will create infill pattern through extruder turtle so we can control the path taken by the nozzle. The motivation for this is to reduce the unnecessary movements at each layer when creating the infill pattern.
Timeline
Week of November 4th: Research what type of patterns aid in structural strength and provide the most value while reducing cost. Looking into support structures such as buildings and bridges will help.
Week of November 11th: Start working on creating our own infill pattern by using extruder turtle.
Week of November 14-21 : Test our infill pattern by using our 3D printers to see the type of pattern is viable.
Week of November 28-Dec 6: Quantitively prove the structure integrity of our pattern
Related Work
https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/abs/10.1089/3dp.2015.0036
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1742-6596/1402/4/044041/meta
This is a really cool and unique idea! I like how it’s very research and experiment focused in comparison to a lot of the other posts I’ve seen. Will you be writing the infill pattern using your own custom gcode? What tools do you plan on using to help write this? Good luck and looking forward to how this turns out.
Hey Samuel,
Yes, we will be writing our own infill pattern(s). Our initial thoughts drew to what’s familiar, with a library like Extruder Turtle. Whether we use other tools remains to be seen, but we’ll be sure to include this in our final report!
Hi Ricardo and Nathan, this is a really interesting space in 3D printing since almost any shape/pattern can be turned into an infill, whether it’s good or not is a whole different story, but there is quite a lot of exploration you two can do. I am interested to see how the final results turn out with the created infill.
Hi Luka,
The amount of different directions we can take can be overwhelming. However, we hope to keep the scope of our project to just infill pattern. Focusing on what type of patterns really benefits 3D printers. These could be regular shapes or irregular paths such as randomness to just put globs of filament at random locations. I feel like the final pattern will fulfill our purpose but will also look interesting.
Hey Nathan and Ricardo!
The idea you have of making a new infill pattern is fascinating. Looking to change the way people print their infill designs seems incredibly difficult but could have huge benefits in the 3D printing space. This whole field is about people breaking through previously established techniques or ideas so I hope your addition goes well! Do you have any starting ideas of what your pattern will look like? What made you want to research this subject?
Hi Ryan,
The idea actually came from a project back in high school where we had to built a bridge with popsicle sticks. We were taught that triangles offer great support and you’ll see throughout construction you will see triangles throughout the structure. So I figured we can take the same concepts and apply it to our needs. Of course we won’t use just simple triangles as our infill pattern since that will be boring and easy. This will be our starting guide on what patterns we will investigate.
Ahoy Nathan and Ricardo!
This project sounds sounds so cool. Do you have idea on what tests and what better means? How will your infill differ from stock? I have so many question that I hope you figure out on your own, just not to give you more work then you bargained for.
A dumb idea that I had: I wish you would try is using the hot nosel to shape the infill, I had that idea when try to do the gcode assiment, I feel like you could push the fillment and give shapes tench and compression were need to make them stronger then if it was not under those loads.
There are a lot of different options we can explore, and some infills we explore are going to come after more research that hasn’t been conducted yet.
However, the primary avenue that I have a personal interest in through this project is exploring how to reduce the total amount of infill while still maintaining the structural integrity that infill is supposed to create, such as maybe using diagonal beams to connect different layer segments. We’ll confirm if this is a good idea during further research.