Design Optimum Robotic Toolpath Layout for 3-D Printed Spatial Structures

Abstract

This paper presents an improved method for designing robotic toolpath of 3-D printed spatial structures to enhance the overall structural performance. This research includes a practical case of the Cloud Pavilion 2.0, an upgrade version of Cloud Pavilion 1.0 which was conducted in the IASS 2018 conference. Traditionally, the computational and structural design phases for robotic printed structures were considered as independent. However, since the printed lattice structure itself can be recognized as a space frame system in a smaller scale, there is the potential to improve its structural efficiency by modify the toolpath geometry and layout at the early design stage. This paper discusses the design parameters in robotic toolpath that influence the structural stiffness, and also a numerical method is applied on the testing specimens consisting of an amount of discrete toolpath elements. The structural topological optimization is used to define the toolpath prototype and relocate the mesh vertices.