USA As Represented by Secretary of the Navy

John Steuben

John Michopoulos

Athanasios Iliopoulos

Andrew J Birnbaum

A method for flexible functionally tailorable slicing for additive manufacturing includes the steps of receiving and parsing an input model of an object to be additively manufactured; reconstructing a domain boundary of the object; computing individual layer boundaries of the object; constructing, for each layer, layer domains from respective enclosing boundaries; computing, for each layer, a perimeter shell and a volumetric infill by finding level sets of a field function selected by a user; collecting and arranging into a coherent sequence each perimeter shell and volumetric infill; and formatting the coherent sequence as motion commands for an additive manufacturing system.

Implicit method and an algorithm for flexible functionally tailorable slicing for additive manufacturing

A method and apparatus for volumetric manufacture of three-dimensional physical objects from a precursor material based on plans, specifications, or virtual models. A build domain is provided comprising an enclosed three-dimensional wire grid in which the wires are connected to one or more electric power sources configured to controllably and addressably apply power to one or more individual wires to cause the wires to dissipate heat produced by Joule heating to the surrounding precursor material situated within the build domain, and to further allow for the control of the three-dimensional heat distribution and accordingly temperature distribution within the build domain. By activating and deactivating one or more predetermined subsets of the wires in the build domain, the precursor can be caused to melt and/or solidify so as to form a three-dimensional object within the build domain.

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Oxon Hill, MD, United States of America

John Steuben