Research On Slicing Algorithm For Rapid Prototyping Technology

With the development of manufacturing technology, traditional manufacturingtechnology can not meet the demand of consumers for individuality and Multifactorproducts. And at the same time, computer-aided manufacturing, automation controland new materials technologies developed rapidly, so Rapid Prototyping (RP)technology come into being. Pre-data processing is the most important part in RapidPrototyping technology and STL format is the popular data form. Slicing algorithmfor STL model consumes the most time of data processing, many slicing algorithmswere provided, but there are some problems still, so all Rapid Prototyping softwaresystems pursue precise and efficient algorithm.This paper concentrates on research of the slicing algorithm on STL model.Based on the analysis of existing algorithm, this paper has made some achievementsthat are as follows.1. Developed a display system by calling OpenGL library functions with VisualC++compilation environment. The system can read and display STL models, and themodel have coordinate transformation and zoom functions. These functions providethe basis for STL model checking and repairing, beneficial to future softwaredevelopment.2. Analysis the losses and errors of floating-point operations and slice contourerror. Analysis the source of floating-point operations losses, the error types of slicecontour and shortage of existing repair algorithms.3. Proposed a slicing algorithm based on a local topology relations. Existingalgorithms can not repair the error of slice contour completely, the paper proposed alocal topology to avoid floating-point operations errors in Error-prone places. Theexperiment results show that the algorithm can eliminate wrongs of lost and redundantedges of the slice contour, and it is very effective in large-scale and high precisionmodel.