Robot-assisted 3D printing has drawn a lot of attention by its capability to fabricate curved layers that are optimized according to different objectives. However, the support generation algorithm based on a fixed printing direction for planar layers cannot be directly applied for curved layers as the orientation of material accumulation is dynamically varied. In this paper, we propose a skeleton-based support generation method for robot-assisted 3D printing with curved layers. The support is represented as an implicit solid so that the problems of numerical robustness can be effectively avoided. The effectiveness of our algorithm is verified on a dual-material printing platform that consists of a robotic arm and a newly designed dual-material extruder. Experiments have been successfully conducted on our system to fabricate a variety of freeform models.

翻译：机器人辅助3D打印因其能够根据不同目标优化制造曲面层的能力而受到广泛关注。然而，基于固定打印方向平面层的支撑生成算法无法直接应用于曲面层，因为材料堆积的方向会动态变化。本文提出了一种基于骨架的支撑生成方法，用于机器人辅助曲面层3D打印。支撑结构被表示为隐式实体，从而有效避免了数值鲁棒性问题。我们在由机械臂和新设计双材料挤出机构成的双材料打印平台上验证了算法的有效性。实验已成功在我们的系统上制造出多种自由形态模型。