16-Feb-17 Infill percentage and pattern affect a lot more than just the weight and strength of a 3D print, as studies have shown, and determining the optimal parameters can be tricky. One of the tricky aspects of infill optimization is trying to strike a good balance between strength and weight – it can be tough to design a strong, solid part without it ending up as heavy as a doorstop. But now a group of researchers from the Technical University of Denmark, Delft University of Technology, and the Technical University of Munich have developed a new type of infill that imparts durable strength without weighing an object down.
The researchers’ infill design was inspired by naturally occurring structures – in this case, bone. Trabecular bone (spongy bone), is less dense than cortical bone. Composed of tiny lattice structures, trabecular bone is lightweight and flexible, making up the interior of bone structures, particularly near joints and in the ribs, skull and vertebrae. It may possess less strength than the exterior cortical bone, but it’s still plenty strong, especially for its light weight. Those are the properties that inspired the research team they detail how they worked to translate those properties from nature to 3D printing.
According to the team, their methodology built on voxel-wise topology optimization.
A complex mathematical algorithm was designed to generate an infill that resembled the porous structure of bone. The study details the multiple variables and sub-structures the researchers tested. In the end, the porous, trabecular bone-like structure was concluded to be highly promising for 3D printing – particularly large, lightweight parts. There’s still work to be done to further optimize the technique.
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