Hello, I am Haruki Takahashi from Meiji University.
I am going to "present programmable filament", a printing technique for multi-material 3D printing using an FDM 3D printer.
Advances in 3d printers have been allowing many users to easily print 3D objects.
In particular, there are more and more use of multi-materials in 3D printing becomes essential for application areas.
For example, various colored material allows us to print colorful objects for aesthetics and
some special materials have been used to make functional objects.
To print objects in multi materials, hardware must be supported.
For example, dual nozzle 3d printer can extrude two filaments in a single printing process.
An upgrade kit from Prusa or Palette from Mosaic manufacturing allow a 3D printer to switch filaments while printing.
Our work allows average users to use the most common machinery "single nozzle printer"
for multi-material printing, requiring no hardware modification.
Let me walk-through our approach step by step.
Imagine this printing path. The nozzles move this path, forming a thick wall.
Let's insert a filament into the nozzle for both cases.
On the left side, it is a uni-color filament in the single nozzle just as the conventional 3d printing.
On the right side, we have a programmable filament.
In this case, multiple materials are spliced as several adjacent segments.
As printing proceeds with this programmed filament,
A pattern appears while the materials switch in a thread of filament as planned, automatically.
This is our work "programmable filament".
We program a special filament to print it in the filament according to a printing path.
By using this filament, a single nozzle 3D printer can print a multi-material object in a single shot.
In the paper, we describe the programmable filament with these three steps.
Here, I only talk about printing process of the filament.
Our idea is inspired by Instructable user DasMia's "printing rainbow filament" idea.
This project shows the possibility of printing filament in a long spiral consists of multiple material segments.
We fine-tuned this by directly manipulating the Gcode command, utilizing pause command between the segment switch.
While pausing, a user exchanges materials for the next segment.
As we print each segments in skewed slopes, edges of adjacent segments are joined each other.
To utilize a printed filament, we validated it with various 3D printers and materials,
added a stitch to enhance the binding strength
and created a flat sheet that helped understand the gradation effect while switching materials in produced filament thread.
Based on the properties of a printed filament, we implemented filament design software.
This software generates gcode using the list of the length and material numbers of each segment.
This material number corresponds to the type of the material such as PLA, ABS.
For example, if given lengths 10, 10, 10, 50 mm for each segment and material id of 0, 1, 2, 0,
the software can generate a filament consists of 4 segments and 3 materials.
As end users are not able to define required parameters,
but could easily design the filament if given the input image or 3D objects.
We also implemented software to process the Gcode.
This is one example workflow to start with 3D object as input.
First, using a conventional slicer such as Cura, users can add multiple virtual extruders to assign each material.
Then, the software reads the code and calculates amount of each material needed in printing the final artifact.
By importing this into the filament design software, we can obtain a Gcode for printing a filament.
Using the software, we show various examples with some information.
For example, a smart watch printed in PLA and TPU,
a facade of UIST logo with clear color distinction,
and regular 3D models that are segmented several parts for multi-color printing.
Please refer to our paper for more detail and validation.
The result of our work, programmable filament, suggests the outlook of 3d printing in the future.
First, with a programmable filament, manufactures may produce a custom filament on-demand, upon a users request.
If users can print a filament, filament data will be shared with a 3d model.
so the user can replicate the filament with some variations.
Also, our technique proposes users to fabricate a filament with new properties by mixing various filaments in different proportions.
There are some limitations.
Because we moves the printer head in z direction to print a filament,
some extra hardware such as a magnetic stopper and fan near the extruder may touch and drag previous segment while printing.
Also, we found printing failures might occur while using a printed filament, which shift a pattern or mix materials.
That can be corrected if the monitoring system is integrated.
Finally, our techniques build on empirical results.
To fully utilize the printed filaments, further analysis on structure and material properties must be accompanied.
That's all for my presentation. Thank you for watching!