A Slicer and Simulator for Cooperative 3D Printing

Cooperative 3D printing is an emerging technology that aims to increase the 3D printing speed and to overcome the size limit of the printable object by having multiple mobile 3D printers (or printhead-carrying mobile robots) work together on a single print job on a factory floor. It differs from traditional layer-by-layer 3D printing due to the requirement for multiple mobile printers working simultaneously without interfering with each other. Therefore, a new approach for slicing the CAD model and generating commands for the mobile printers is needed, which has not been discussed in the literature before. We propose a chunk-by-chunk based slicer that divides an object into chunks so that different mobile printers can print different chunks simultaneously without interfering with each other. In this paper, we developed a slicer for cooperative 3D printing with two mobile fused deposition modeling (FDM) printers. In order to validate our slicer and visualize the cooperative 3D printing process, we have also developed a simulator environment, which can be a valuable tool in optimizing cooperative 3D printing strategy. Results show that the developed slicer and simulator are working effectively.Mechanical Engineerin