Communications of the ACM
New Tool Gives Structural Strength to 3-D Printed Works
Bedrich Benes, an associate professor of computer graphics at Purdue University, is working with Advanced Technology Labs of Adobe Inc. to develop a computer program that automatically strengthens objects created using 3-D printing.
Credit: Purdue University photo/Mark Simons
Researchers at Purdue University and Adobe Advanced Technology Labs have developed a program that automatically adds strength to objects before they are printed.
"It runs a structural analysis, finds the problematic part, and then automatically picks one of the three possible solutions," says Purdue professor Bedrich Benes. The software automatically strengthens objects by increasing the thickness of key structural elements or by adding struts, and it also reduces the stress on structural elements by hollowing out overweight elements. "We not only make the objects structurally better, but we also make them much more inexpensive," says Adobe research manager Radomir Mech.
The tool automatically identifies grip positions where a user is likely to hold the object, and the technique requires less computing power than conventional finite-element modeling tools. "The [three-dimensional] printing doesn't have to be so precise, so we developed our own structural analysis program that doesn't pay significant attention to really high precision," Benes says.
From Purdue University News
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