Palo Alto Research Center Inc.

Xerox Corporation

Morad Behandish

Saigopal Nelaturi

Amirmassoud Mirzendehdel

Johan De Kleer

Ion Matei

Aleksandar B Feldman

Svyatoslav Korneev

Matt Patterson

Lara S Crawford

Christoforos Somarakis

Dogan Timucin

Johan Dekleer

Jiangce Chen

Soren Taverniers

Amir Mirzendehdel

Matthew Patterson

Randi Wang

Søren Taverniers

Qian Ye

This disclosure teaches techniques, devices, and systems for automatically modifying a 3-Dimensional (3D) object model. The apparatus comprising a memory and a processing device coupled to the memory. The processor and the memory are configured to obtain an input 3D object model comprising an input 3D mesh, analyze the input 3D mesh to identify unprintable overhangs that have an angle over an overhang angle limit and identify vertices associated with the unprintable overhangs as active vertices, and perform an optimization process to move the active vertices to eliminate the unprintable overhangs and generate a modified 3D mesh. The optimization process includes a gradient descent search algorithm performed on an objective function comprising a cost function configured to minimize a difference between the input 3D mesh and the modified 3D mesh subject to an overhang constraint related to the overhang angle limit.

Shape modification for self-supporting structures in additive manufacturing

The present disclosure provides techniques for analyzing trapped unused materials during AM. For example, given a geometry or shape to be manufactured using one or more AM materials, a tool path for solidifying the one or more AM materials is generated to turn the geometry into a physical object based on one or more manufacturing parameters related to AM resolutions. A processing device may compute a simulated manufactured geometry (e.g., a realistic representation of the actual shape of the corresponding physical object to be produced) based on the tool path and the one or more manufacturing parameters. The processing device analyzes the simulated manufactured geometry for a portion of removable AM materials trapped inside the simulated manufactured geometry. The processing device then generates a report regarding the portion of the removable AM materials trapped inside the simulated manufactured geometry.

Avoiding trapping unused additive manufacturing materials during production

This disclosure provides techniques for manufacturing parts using digital twin(s) to manage various aspects of the manufacturing system. An example method may include representing a manufacturing system using a digital twin. In some cases, representing the manufacturing system includes modeling, in the digital twin, digital representations that correspond to a number of physical components of the manufacturing system. The physical components include at least: a manufacturing material, a working environment for deposition of the manufacturing material (e.g., for additive manufacturing), a tool to manipulate the manufacturing material between at least two matter states in the working environment, and sensors measuring behaviors of the tool, the working environment, and the manufacturing material. The method may further include receiving a manufacturing production task. The task may include a digital model of a part to be manufactured and default parameters for the manufacturing material(s), the working environment, and the tool.

Manufacturing methods and systems including digital twin managing process, lifecycle, and instance

Techniques for modeling a droplet-based additive manufacturing process are disclosed. An example method includes obtaining training data, setting one or more hyperparameter values in a data-driven surrogate model architecture, and training, by a processing device, the surrogate model architecture on the training data to generate a trained surrogate model. The trained surrogate model is to be used in lieu of a physics-based model to make predictions about the results of an additive manufacturing process. The training data includes pairs of input data and output data, wherein the input data describes an initial state of a substrate and a molten droplet inside a moving subdomain prior to the molten droplet impacting the substrate and the output data describes a final state of the substrate inside that moving subdomain after the molten droplet has impacted the substrate and coalesced with previously deposited droplets making up the initial state of the substrate.

Surrogate modeling of molten droplet coalescence in additive manufacturing

A nondestructive method for detecting damage in parts and/or characterizing effective material properties may include: exposing a material to one or more nondestructive stimuli; measuring a response of the material to the stimuli; selecting at least one of a specific length scale or a specific time scale; and analyzing the measurement of the response with a scale-aware single- or multi-physics model to identify anomalies in the measurements as compared to an expected response of the material to the stimuli, wherein the scale-aware single- or multi-physics model is based on the at least one of the specific length scale or the specific time scale.

Nondestructive methods and systems for detecting and/or characterizing damage

A method includes receiving a representation of an initial design domain. The method also includes iteratively generating intermediate part designs by redistributing material within the initial design domain. The intermediate part designs each include a 3D part and a support volume. The method also includes calculating a measure of inaccessibility of the support volume of each intermediate part design by at least one subtractive tool assembly. At least one of the intermediate part designs is generated based at least partially upon the measure of inaccessibility of a previous one of the intermediate part designs.

Automated design generation for additive manufacturing with an accessible support volume

The present disclosure provides techniques for automatically modifying shape features related to overhangs such that support structures can be reduced or avoided. In an example, a shape modification processing device may obtain an initial shape and relevant production information (e.g., overhang angle threshold). The shape modification processing device may modify the shape to improve various aspects of production, including reduction or removal of the need for support materials or structures during additive manufacturing, with considerations that allow the modified portion (e.g., added features) be accessible for removal by subtractive manufacturing. For example, the shape modification processing device may modify a model to reduce or remove support structures needed during production. The added features may later be removed by subtractive manufacturing to restore any functional or desired shape.

Modifying shape based on level set representation to reduce support in additive manufacturing

The techniques discussed herein generally relate to a method and system for qualitative modeling of and reasoning about the behavior of spatio-temporal physical systems. In some embodiments, qualitative representations based on Tonti diagrams are used to describe lumped or distributed parameter systems. Using a topological structure of the physical system, some embodiments generate qualitative governing equations as symbolic constraints on qualitative state variables. The qualitative constraints may be used to produce a qualitative simulation of the physical system. The qualitative simulation may be used to guide conceptual design iterations with given design criteria, or for instantiation of quantitative or hybrid (qualitative and quantitative) models and simulations.

Method and system for qualitative reasoning of spatio-temporal physical systems

A method of classifying design criteria includes receiving design criteria for a product part. The criteria comprise one or both of performance and manufacturing criteria. The design criteria are sorted into different classes of one or both of one or more objective functions and one or more constraints based on when they can be satisfied or optimized. Constraint violations are determined. A design workflow is produced to generate one or more designs of a part to comply with one or more of satisfying constraints and optimizing objective functions.

Method and system for part design using heterogeneous constraints

A representation of an initial design domain, at least one subtractive tool assembly, machine degrees of freedom, and a termination criterion are used to iteratively generate intermediate part designs by redistributing the material within the design domain. A measure of inaccessibility of exteriors of the intermediate part designs by the at least one subtractive manufacturing tool assembly are generated. The measure of inaccessibility is used to inform generation of an intermediate part design at a next iteration. The iterative algorithm is terminated when the termination criterion is satisfied, the result of the iterative algorithm being a part design accessible for subtractive manufacturing.

Automated design and optimization for accessibility in subtractive manufacturing

A method includes receiving a representation of a near-net shape including a 3D part and a support volume. The method also includes calculating a measure of inaccessibility of the support volume by at least one subtractive tool assembly. The method also includes calculating a measure of change in a physical quantity of interest with respect to a change in the near-net shape. The method also includes constructing a physics-aware inaccessibility measure based at least partially upon the measure of inaccessibility, the measure of change, or both. The method also includes creating a plan to remove at least a portion of the support volume using the at least one subtractive tool assembly based at least partially upon the physics-aware inaccessibility measure.

Physics-aware automatic spatial planning for subtractive and hybrid manufacturing

Two or more computational services are defined that each represent a respective different manufacturing capability used to partially create a target part model. A common space shared among the computational services is defined to reference the target part model and manufacturing primitives corresponding to each capability. The computational services are queried to construct a logical representation of the planning space based on intersections among the primitives. One or more process plans are formed using the different manufacturing capabilities to manufacture the part.

Method and system for representation-agnostic composition of hybrid manufacturing services

A systematic approach to constructing process plans for hybrid manufacturing is provided. The process plans include arbitrary combinations of AM and SM processes. Unlike the suboptimal conventional practice, the sequence of AM and SM modalities is not fixed beforehand. Rather, all potentially viable process plans to fabricate a desired target part from arbitrary alternating sequences of pre-defined AM and SM modalities are explored in a systematic fashion. Once the state space of all process plans has been enumerated in terms of a partially ordered set of states, advanced artificial intelligence (AI) planning techniques are utilized to rapidly explore the state space, eliminate invalid process plans, for instance, process plans that make no physical sense, and optimize among the valid process plans using a cost function, for instance, manufacturing time and material or process costs.

System and method for constructing process plans for hybrid manufacturing with the aid of a digital computer

A geometry model is defined of a part targeted for a manufacturing operation that includes an additive process followed by a subtractive process. Potential build orientations of the geometry model used in the additive processes are defined, as are one or more removal tools of the subtractive process. For each of the potential build orientations, supports that are used by the additive process at the orientation are determined. One of the build orientations is selected that minimizes portions of one of the supports that are inaccessible via at least one of the removal tools.

Hybrid manufacturing system and method that reduces inaccessible support structures

One embodiment of the present disclosure provides a system and method for facilitating a search for a hybrid-manufacturing process plan for manufacturing an object. During operation, the system can obtain a set of partial order constraints constraining the order in which a set of at least two manufacturing actions, corresponding to addition or removal of predefined regions of space, appear in a process plan. The system can constrain, based on the set of partial order constraints, a search space. The search space can correspond to a tree in which the nodes represent the object's state and the edges represent available actions at each node. The system can then determine a set of optimized process plans represented by orderings of the actions, corresponding to paths on the search tree, that produce the desired final state in a cost-effective manner.

Growing community of inventors

Mountain View, CA, United States of America

Morad Behandish