Manufacturability identification based on the slice for vat photopolymerization

Ceramic vat photopolymerization (CVP) is one of the important Additive Manufacturing (AM) technologies, which is widely used in the production of high-precision ceramic parts in industries such as aerospace and healthcare. It is necessary to conduct manufacturability analysis on the designed model to reduce the number of product iterations, improve efficiency, and reduce costs. In order to overcome the shortcomings of current CVP manufacturability analysis methods, a new manufacturability analysis method combining geometry processing and mechanical analysis is proposed in this paper. A contour point classification method based on diameter threshold is designed, and Shape Diameter Function (SDF) technology is used to identify points with different local average diameters in slice contour, obtaining the initial safety index of the entire contour. The contour segmentation algorithm is designed to segment slice contours based on three conditions to identify 2D thin branches that may have printing problems, and 2D branches are combined in 3D through the intersection relationship of slice layers. The slice adopts the bending cantilever beam model in the mechanics of materials as a whole and uses the plate and shell theory to detect the deformation of thin branches under recoating tangential force. The overhang is also identified to obtain all areas with realizability issues. The feasibility and practicality of this method have been verified through testing on different cases.