Three Dimensional Infill in Additive Manufacturing

A system of printing a three dimensional article fabricated from a series of additive material runs, the additive material runs comprising lengths of filament, the three dimensional article including three dimensional infill, the system comprising:

• a programmed computer analyzing the three dimensional article to determine an inner boundary of an internal space bounded by the article;
• a memory storing a library of repeatable voxel shapes;
• a selectable menu utilized to select a repeatable voxel shape from said library;
• a selectable menu utilized to select a size of the repeatable voxel shape to provide a predetermined strength and weight of infill;
• the programmed computer generating a volume utilizing the selected size of the repeatable voxel shape which fully encompasses an inner boundary of the article;
• a menu utilized to select an existing symmetrical pattern to generate infill which connects meta anchor points on the selected size of repeatable voxel shape thereby establishing a meta infill tool path;
• the programmed computer determining intersections between segments of the meta infill tool path and the boundary;
• the programmed computer pruning any segments of the meta infill tool path outside the boundary;
• the programmed computer pruning any meta anchor points outside the boundary and
• establishing new anchor points where segments of the meta infill tool path intersect with the inner boundary;
• and
• a print head to print three dimensional infill utilizing the infill tool path.

A computer-controlled method of printing a three dimensional article fabricated from a series of additive material runs, said article having an internal volume with three dimensional printed infill, the additive material runs comprising lengths of filament, the method comprising:

• determining a boundary of an internal space bounded by the article;
• selecting a repeatable voxel shape;
• selecting a size of the repeatable voxel shape to provide a predetermined strength and weight of infill;
• generating a volume utilizing the selected size of the repeatable voxel shape which fully encompasses the article;
• selecting an existing symmetrical pattern to generate infill which connects meta anchor points on the selected size of repeatable voxel shape thereby establishing a meta infill tool path;
• determining intersections between segments of the meta infill tool path and the boundary;
• establishing a three dimensional infill tool path by pruning any segments of the meta infill tool path outside the boundary, pruning any meta anchor points outside the boundary, and establishing new anchor points where segments of the meta infill tool path intersect with the boundary;
• and
• printing infill utilizing the three dimensional infill tool path.