Three-Dimensional Printing Robot System

Since the 1980's, the large-scale inkjet printer was widely used in a variety of flat printing tasks with full color, and established its unshakable status in the printing industry. With the improvement of the printing technology and the development of the computer 3D simulation, more and more 3D printing requirement become burst. However, the existing ink-jet printing equipment could only print on the plane material, the printing technology for the three-dimensional model is currently only at the exploratory stage, which is far behind 3D technology in computer. Furthermore, there are few reports for the theoretical issues in research three-dimensional printing.Thus, in this thesis, the mechanism on three-dimensional printing is deeply dissected based on the prototype of three-dimensional inkjet printing robot developed by Institute of Robotics and Automatic Information System, Nankai University. Pointing to the key problems which would be faced to in 3D printing under the present conditions, some useful suggestions are proposed to the design of the 3D printing platform.The thesis starts from the thorough analysis of the major components in the 3D printing system. Then the printing principle on 3D full-color printing robot is introduced with the functions and relationship between each module. Based on the exposition of the mechanism on 3D printing robot, the principle analysis and detailed design is presented to the color conversion, halftone processing in the 3D printing. Furthermore, in order to research the process of color render in 3D printing, the model of infiltration status of ink drop is first proposed to provide the parameters to 3D coating process and the compensation algorithm for color distortions in the 3D printing mentioned as follows. In Chapter 4, by investigating the reason of color distortions in 3D printing, a novel multi-step compensation algorithm based on the angle and height of 3D model is developed, and many relative parameters of 3D printing such as height, angle, slope etc. are involved to the algorithm design in the following three steps - sprinkler head control, color conversion, and halftone processing. Finally, the experimental results show the performance of the 3D printing robot platform and the proposed algorithms.With the rapid development of the computer 3D technology, the relative technologies such as 3D scene, data model of remote sensing, and 3D simulation display etc. burst forth, and become a large-scale industry. Due to the research on the mechanism of 3D printing in the thesis, the technologies mentioned above could be broken through from the scope of computer which in turn can be disclosed to the real 3D models with the same precision, color intensity, and fidelity. With the technologies developed proposed in the thesis, a rising domain would be provided for the printing industry, and the core technology of China's printing industry would be enhanced.