Turning-angle optimized printing path of continuous carbon fiber for cellular structures
Yuming Huang, Guoxin Fang, Tianyu Zhang, Charlie C. L. Wang
Abstract
This paper presents an algorithm to compute optimized toolpaths to print thin-walled cellular structures with continuous carbon fiber. The input cellular structure is usually represented by a graph G, and the requirements to ensure high quality manufacturing include the coverage, continuity and sharp-turning prevention of fiber deposition. To satisfy these requirements, we develop a new algorithm to search a continuous path on G’s dual graph, the corresponding path on which G minimizes the total energy of tuning angles and can visit all edges of G at least once and at most twice. With the help of a post-processing algorithm, a path determined on the dual graph can be converted into an overlap-reduced toolpath for printing continuous carbon fiber. Physical tests were conducted to demonstrate the advantage of printing paths generated by our algorithm. Up to 46% enhancement on the breaking force is observed during the tensile tests when using a similar amount of fibers.