Research On The Automatic Support Generation Of Fused Deposition Modeling

As an important technological achievement of the third industrial revolution, rapid prototyping technology different from traditional manufacturing technology gradually, which can quickly and accurately create complex three-dimensional entity by overlapping layer by layer. Fused deposition modeling is one of main technologies at present, it has many advantages such as low material cost, high utilization rate, high forming speed, compact equipment structure, easy to operate, can form complex parts and support could be easily removed. It also has been widely applied in architectural model, medical instrument, aerospace.FDM rapid prototyping technology create 3d entity by overlapping layer by layer. To realize prototype par successfully, design of support structure has become one of the most important technological problems in rapid prototyping technology. Hence support generation algorithm in rapid prototyping technology was studied in this paper.First of all, STL file was read and displayed. 3D model based on STL file was showed vividly by using of Open GL programming techniques. Then serial section method of 3D STL model was studied and a fast slicing algorithm based on topologic reconstruction which could avoid the problems of time consuming and memory committing in slicing process was proposed. Finally, according to the comparison of advantages and disadvantages of several kinds of support generation algorithms, FDM support automatic generation algorithm based on linear scanning was adopted. This algorithm could scan slice contour directly, obtain scan line segment, transform two dimensional Boolean operations into one dimensional, the support of area is obtained through minus and union operation of scan line.The results of experiment show that this algorithmic principle is simple, generate support could not omission.