Minimizing staircase errors in the orthogonal layered manufacturing system

Abstract

The factors that generally affect the slicing error in layered manufacturing (LM) processes are first analyzed, and issues pertaining to the current methods to deal with the slicing error are discussed in this paper. A method based on a recently developed and implemented orthogonal LM system to reduce the overall slicing error is presented. In this method, the flat region is separated from the stereolithography (STL) model and different processing methods are applied to the different areas in the part geometry. In addition, the mathematical model for calculating the slicing error is derived and an approach based on a genetic algorithm has been developed to optimize the build orientation in terms of minimizing the slicing error. Case studies are given to demonstrate the effectiveness and efficiency of the method. © 2005 IEEE.