Generating a manufacturing job
AssigneeHewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P.
InventorsSergio Gonzalez, Jordi Gonzalez Rogel, Matthew A. Shepherd
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
An additive manufacturing apparatus includes an additive manufacturing engine and an input to receive a plurality of part files to create a plurality of parts. Each part file includes a description of a part to be created by the additive manufacturing engine. A processor interprets a part file to read the description of the part from the part file, stores at least a portion of the description of the part, and repeats the interpretation and storing for each of the received part files. A job composer generates a manufacturing job using the stored descriptions and using characteristics of the additive manufacturing engine, and provides the generated manufacturing job to the additive manufacturing engine.
Claims18
An additive manufacturing apparatus, comprising:
- an additive manufacturing engine;
- an input to receive a plurality of part files to create a plurality of parts, wherein each part file includes a description of a part to be created by the additive manufacturing engine, the plurality of part files comprising files in different formats;
- a processor to
- interpret a part file to read the description of the part from the part file by identifying one of a plurality of parsers that corresponds to the format of the part file and applying the identified parser to interpret the corresponding part file to retrieve the description of the part in a format used by the additive manufacturing apparatus,
- store at least a portion of the description of the part, and
- repeat the interpretation and storing for each of the received part files;
- and
- a job composer to generate a manufacturing job using the stored descriptions and using characteristics of the additive manufacturing engine, and to provide the generated manufacturing job to the additive manufacturing engine.
A method, comprising:
- receiving, at an additive manufacturing system, a plurality of part files in different formats to create a plurality of parts, wherein each part file includes a description of a part to be created;
- interpreting the plurality of part files in the different formats to read the description of the parts from the part files, and storing at least a portion of the read descriptions of the part files;
- generating a manufacturing job using the stored descriptions and using a characteristic of the additive manufacturing system to be used for creating the plurality of parts;
- and
- applying the manufacturing job to an additive manufacturing engine of the additive manufacturing system;
- wherein a first part file defines a first part with polygonal meshes and as second part file defines a second part with a volumetric raster.
A non-transitory machine-readable storage medium comprising instructions executable by a processor, the machine-readable storage medium comprising:
- instructions to cause an additive manufacturing system to receive a plurality of part files, wherein each part file includes a description of a part to be created;
- instructions to process each of the received part files, wherein the instructions to process each of the plurality of part files include
- instructions to interpret the part file to read the description of the part from the part file, and
- instructions to store at least a portion of the read description of the part file;
- instructions to generate a manufacturing job using the stored descriptions and using characteristics of the additive manufacturing system to be used for creating the plurality of parts;
- and
- instructions to operate an additive manufacturing engine of the additive manufacturing system using the manufacturing job;
- wherein the storage medium further comprises a parser for interpreting a 3D language that does not include a capability of defining how a part is to be built by an additive manufacturing apparatus.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.