Electrophotography-based additive manufacturing with support structure and support structure removal

A method of printing a plurality of parts in an additive manufacturing system, comprising:

• identifying a plurality of parts to print;
• locating digital representations of the plurality of parts in a build volume;
• generating a digital representation of porous support structures for the plurality of parts to form a digital representation of a part block including the plurality of identified parts and the porous support structures, wherein an inner block wall is generated that is configured to be positioned about at least one of the plurality of parts and a porosity of the support structure increases as a distance from a surface of at least one of the plurality of parts increases in a direction towards a boundary of the print volume;
• slicing the digital representation of the part block including the plurality of identified parts and the porous support structures;
• and
• printing layers of the plurality of parts and support material based upon the sliced digital representation of the part block.

A computer program product comprising non-transitory computer-executable code embodied in a non-transitory computer medium that, when executing on one or more computing devices performs the steps of:

• generating a digital part block file for building a part and a support structure for an additive manufacturing device, wherein a porosity of the support structure increases as a distance from an outer surface of the part;
• slicing the digital part block into a plurality of slices;
• and
• outputting the plurality of slices for use in
• outputting the plurality of slices for use in printing the part and the support structure according to the sliced digital part block file by imaging and transfusing layers of the part and the support structure onto previously printed layers of the part and the support structure.