Study on adaptive slicing algorithm of functionally graded material components for Rapid Prototyping

Rapid Prototyping (RP) technology involves layered manufacturing and deposition of material on a point-wise fashion or a line-wise fashion to manufacture components. It is specially suited to manufacture the heterogeneous components in which the material is variational in one layer or between layers. Slicing is a very important procedure in RP technology, especially adaptive slicing is the effective means which guarantees the quality of components molding and improves the efficiency of RP manufacturing. The paper presents an adaptive slicing algorithm of functionally graded material (FGM) components for RP. The algorithm is studied by considering both geometry information and material distribution information. The layer thickness is computed according to the area variation rate between two adjacent slices, the gradient of material distribution and material resolution. After slicing, the material information in each slice is stored discretely by material composition function and material resolution. Finally, an example is presented.