Printing Orientation Analysis of Model 3D Printing Based on Minimum Theory Support Volumes.

In the 3D printing processes, aiming at the problems that the support volumes of the model needed to decrease after printing, the relationships between the printing orientations and the support volumes were studied, and a method to search the printing orientations toward the minimal theory support volumes was developed. First, the background of theory support volumes of discrete grid models was introduced, and a calculative method was suggested to minimize the theory support volumes. Second, the continuity of the theory support volume functions was analyzed to overcome the discontinuity problems of the functions. A derivative-free optimization algorithm was proposed to obtain the correct orientation of minimum theory support volumes. Experiments show that the proposed algorithm may accurately calculate the correct orientations corresponding to the theory support volumes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]