Abstract
In additive manufacturing applications, the affordability and availability of print volumes are the limiting factors in large-scale fabrication. A workaround is to divide the desired part into smaller partitions that can be manufactured in parallel, which also allows for various structural and fabrication optimizations. A proposed optimizing approach is to reconstruct the part into a cube skeleton covered by shell segments. This thesis focuses on partitioning the shell segments with only the maximally inscribed cube that is oriented along the principal axes of the part, aiming to minimize partition volume differences to increase parallel fabrication efficiency. Variations of the method is shown with the cube centering both on the origin of the principal axes and on the centroid skewed with second moment of inertia, as well as partitioning with cuboids extended from the cubes. The proposed algorithm first hollows out the original fully dense part to a user-specified thickness, updates the selected cube center, then partitions the part into 26 surrounding regions using the six faces of the maximally inscribed cube (or cuboid). Islands, i.e., small, disconnected partitions within each region, are combined with neighbors to create up to 26 connected partitions. To minimize the number of printed partitions, the connected partitions are ranked based on their volume and combined in pairs in descending order, while ensuring each pair fits within a pre-selected build volume of available 3D printers. Two neighbor selection criteria, combining with the maximum or with the minimum neighbor, are employed for both the island consolidating and the pairing processes. The final partitioned shell segments are generated by the proposed algorithm, which, given its simplicity and efficiency, can be used recursively or be incorporated into existing methods. Results of three cases are shown.