System and method for three-dimensional printing
AssigneeStratasys, Inc.
InventorsShai Lipowitch, Yoav Bressler, Shahar Klinger, Yosef Meller
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Abstract
Methods and systems are disclosed for selecting a print head of a 3D printing machine to apply 3D printing material at one or more positions in a printed 3D object. Embodiments of the present invention may include, in the selection process one or more elements pertaining for example to: geometry of the received 3D model; colorization of the received 3D model; transparency of the received 3D model; properties of the 3D printing material; and constraints of the 3D printing machine.
Claims17
A method of selecting, by one or more processors, a print head of a three-dimensional (3D) printing machine, the method comprising:
- receiving a shell data element corresponding to a 3D geometric shape of an object, the shell data element comprising a plurality of shell points and a respective plurality of source colorization vectors;
- producing a plurality of slice elements, corresponding to respective planar slices of the 3D geometric shape;
- for one or more slices, defining a colorization envelope at the contour of the slice, comprising a plurality of colorization points (CPs) aligned in a printing grid of the 3D printing machine;
- for one or more CPs, determining, by a predefined distance metric, a closest shell point among a plurality of shell points;
- for one or more CPs, attributing a target colorization vector to the one or more CPs, based on the source colorization vector of the determined closest shell point;
- and
- for one or more CPs, selecting a printing head, based on the attributed target colorization vector;
- wherein selecting a printing head for a CP comprises:
- applying a dithering algorithm on a CMYKW-α (cyan, magenta, yellow, black, white-α) target colorization vector to obtain a droplet color value that is selected from a list consisting of:
- cyan, magenta, yellow, black, white and transparent;
- and
- selecting a print head corresponding to the selected droplet color value,
- wherein attributing a target colorization vector comprises:
- receiving one or more profile functions pertaining to one or more printing materials of the 3D printting machine;
- using the one or more profile functions to convert the source colorization vector to a first intermediary colorization vector;
- receiving one or more color normalization data elements pertaining to one or more printing materials of the 3D printing machine;
- using the one or more color normalization data elements to normalize one or more components of first intermediary colorization vector, so as to convert the first intermediary colorization vector to a second intermediary colorization vector;
- receiving a transparency normalization data element, pertaining to one or more printing materials of the 3D printing machine;
- and
- using the transparency normalization data element to normalize one or more components of second intermediary colorization vector, so as to convert the second intermediary colorization vector to the target colorization vector.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.