Seamless Mesh With Localized Material Properties
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Solution Overview
Problem
Traditional additive manufacturing techniques are limited in creating seamless products with localized customization, as they often require uniform materials and cannot accommodate variability in product design, leading to the need for multiple components joined by seams.
Innovation Solution
The development of dynamic cellular microstructure construction systems that generate a seamless mesh using 3D scans and curvature data, allowing for customization in localized areas by modifying base shapes with varying material properties such as opacity, stretch, and strength, and enabling the use of multiple materials within a single product.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If traditional additive manufacturing techniques are used to create seamless products, then seams between components are eliminated, but the ability to accommodate localized variability and customization is lost
Solution Approach 1:
The patent applies local quality by enabling different regions of the seamless mesh to have different material properties and geometric characteristics. The system allows localized customization by modifying base shapes in specific areas while maintaining the overall seamless structure, thus resolving the contradiction between seamlessness and localized variability.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent segments the seamless mesh into multiple base shapes that can be independently customized. This segmentation allows each local region to have unique properties while the entire structure remains a single seamless component, eliminating the need for traditional seams while preserving customization capability.
2Ease of manufacture
If uniform materials are used in additive manufacturing, then manufacturing simplicity is maintained, but product functionality and fit are compromised
Solution Approach 1:
The patent enables different material properties to be assigned to different base shapes within the seamless mesh. This allows the product to have uniform manufacturing processes while achieving localized functional variations through material property differentiation, resolving the contradiction between manufacturing simplicity and product functionality.
3Adaptability or versatility
If multiple components are joined together to accommodate design variability, then customization is achieved, but seams and structural complexity are introduced
Solution Approach 1:
The patent merges multiple customizable components into a single seamless mesh structure. By combining what would traditionally be separate pieces into one continuous structure with locally varied properties, the system achieves design variability without the complexity of multiple joined components, eliminating seams while preserving customization.
Data Source
AI summary
Dynamic cellular microstructure designs customize production in an additive manufacturing construction. A seamless mesh generated from an input shape, based on available scans and/or surface designs, is supplemented with curvature data derived from the input shape. Redesign of a base shape and/or group of base shapes within a seamless mesh enable customization in localized areas of the seamless mesh. The seamless mesh may also be retopologized according to localized feature attractor points. Base shape redesign includes cellular replication, subdivision, growth, and/or modification to adjust variable material properties. Modification changes relative opacity, stretch, drape, compressive strength, plasticity, yield strength, resilience, and Poisson's ratio specific to geometry of a base shape. Each base shape can also exhibit modifiable isotropic or anisotropic properties.