Purpose

Adaptive slicing is a key step in three-dimensional (3D) printing as it is closely related to the building time and the surface quality. This study aims to develop a novel adaptive slicing method based on ameliorative area ratio and accurate cusp height for 3D printing using stereolithography (STL) models.

Design/methodology/approach

The proposed method consists of two stages. In the first stage, the STL model is sliced with constant layer thickness, where an improved algorithm for generating active triangular patches, the list is developed to preprocess the model faster. In the second stage, the model is first divided into several blocks according to the number of contours, then an axis-aligned bounding box-based contour matching algorithm and a polygons intersection algorithm are given to compare the geometric information between several successive layers, which will determine whether these layers can be merged to one.

Findings

Several benchmarks are applied to verify this new method. Developed method has also been compared with the uniform slicing method and two existing adaptive slicing methods to demonstrate its effectiveness in slicing.

Originality/value

Compared with other methods, the method leads to fewer layers whilst keeping the geometric error within a given threshold. It demonstrates that the proposed slicing method can reach a trade-off between the building time and the surface quality.

中文翻译：

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基于改善面积比和精确尖端高度的3D打印自适应切片新算法

目的

自适应切片是三维 (3D) 打印的关键步骤，因为它与构建时间和表面质量密切相关。本研究旨在开发一种基于改善面积比和精确尖端高度的新型自适应切片方法，用于使用立体光刻 (STL) 模型进行 3D 打印。

设计/方法/方法

所提出的方法由两个阶段组成。在第一阶段，STL 模型以恒定层厚度切片，其中改进了生成活动三角形补丁的算法，开发列表以更快地对模型进行预处理。在第二阶段，首先将模型根据轮廓的数量划分为若干块，然后给出基于轴对齐的边界框的轮廓匹配算法和多边形相交算法来比较连续几个层之间的几何信息，即将决定这些层是否可以合并为一个。

发现

几个基准被应用来验证这种新方法。开发的方法还与均匀切片方法和两种现有的自适应切片方法进行了比较，以证明其切片的有效性。

原创性/价值

与其他方法相比，该方法导致更少的层数，同时将几何误差保持在给定的阈值内。它表明所提出的切片方法可以在构建时间和表面质量之间取得平衡。