Abstract:

Rapid prototyping technology involves layered manufacturing and deposition of material on a point fashion or a line wise fashion to manufacture components, and is specially suited to manufacture the heterogeneous components in which the material varies in one layer and between two layers. Slicing is a very important procedure in rapid prototyping, and especially the adaptive slicing is the effective means which guarantees the quality of components molding and improve the efficiency of rapid prototyping manufacturing. An adaptive slicing algorithm is presented considering the characteristics of the geometry and material expression of the functionally graded material component model based on finite element method. The algorithm is studied by considering both geometry information and material distribution information. The layer thickness is computed according to the normal direction of component’s external surface, the gradient of material distribution and material resolution. Finally, an example is presented to verify the algorithm validity.

Key words: rapid , prototyping , manufacturing,  , functionally , gradient , material , component,  , geometry , modeling,  , material , modeling,  , adaptive , slicing