An orientation-field based algorithm for free-form material extrusion

Material extrusion is a popular additive manufacturing process that gained prominence in various industrial applications. The current work addresses the limitations of the existing slicing software in producing parts with customized filament layouts. A new filament deposition algorithm that produces filament paths taking as input arbitrary point-wise orientation fields is presented. Like slicing software, it can control various process parameters, including extrusion width, layer height, filament spacing, number of layers, printing and travel speeds, and produces G-Code instructions. Capabilities of the algorithm are presented by producing parts with both partial and maximum infill and parts with a multi-oriented layer stacking sequence. The results show that the algorithm can print parts with filaments oriented along the input orientation field at different infills, thus making this contribution a potential tool for many applications that demand customized filament placement.