Hewlett-packard Development Company, L.P.

Peridot Print LLC

Nicholas Saunders

Jun Zeng

David C Woodlock

David James Tucker

James Andrew Mccutcheon

In an example implementation, a method of generating a conformal structure, includes generating a bottom surface and a top surface of a conformal structure, positioning seed points on a seed surface, where the seed surface comprises the bottom surface or the top surface, and expanding the seed points as spherical cells whose cell boundaries form walls perpendicular to the surfaces as the cell boundaries intersect with cell boundaries of neighboring spherical cells. The method includes intersecting the walls with the top surface as the cells expand vertically upward from the seed surface and intersecting the walls with the bottom surface as the cells expand vertically downward from the seed surface, and applying the conformal structure to a 3D object model for fabrication in an additive manufacturing device.

Generating conformal structures for 3D object models

A parts packing method is used to optimize build bed part placement for additive manufacturing. The method includes a user interface to parts packing software, enabling a process engineer to select parts from a pool of parts, group parts to have uniform orientation, and specify a range of angles and rotation of the parts. Additionally, the user interface accepts input related to process variations among different printers as well as drift over time of a single printer. The user interface feeds the data into the parts packing program to optimize build bed part placement.

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Vancouver, WA, United States of America

Nicholas Saunders