Fascinating stuff, IMHO.
Originally shared by James Rivera
The quote below describes currently available 3D printer tech. The work they did was to the digital model sent to this 3D printer. STL files lack/omit information. Their voxel (volumetric pixel) approach, coupled with new algorithms to mitigate data corruption during the actual printing, results in an object that should look (all the way through) like the source object, and is uniquely innovative. Fascinating stuff.
“… Multimaterial 3D printers (7) operate by depositing droplets of several ultraviolet-curable resins in a layer-by-layer inkjet-like printing process to construct high-resolution 3D objects. High levels of spatial control in manufacturing can be achieved by generating a set of layers in a raster file format at the native resolution of the printer, where each pixel defines the material identity of a droplet and its placement in 3D space. The set of layers can be combined into a voxel matrix. A printer can then process these droplet deposition descriptions given as a voxel matrix to digitally fabricate heterogeneous and continuously varying material composites. This approach is often described as bitmap-based printing (8) or voxel printing (9).”
Voxels are cool. Shame they’re so difficult to use with FFF extruders.
By the way, did you ever see the Photoshop dualstrusion technique to produce raster graphics on the surface of FFF prints? It’s kind of a “surface voxel” approach, if that makes any sense.
@Ryan_Carlyle No I have not. I did not find an obvious link via google. Do you have a link?
Oh man, I can’t find ANYTHING on it. Either I’m mistaken about who was doing it, or they cancelled the feature and scrubbed all mention of it. I think it was this “multitone” feature but I can’t find the video I’m thinking of: https://feedback.photoshop.com/photoshop_family/topics/m3d_feedback
@Ryan_Carlyle LOL, at least I’m not the only one! (my google-fu is usually pretty good) I remember hearing about “3D printing support” in Photoshop and thinking, WTF? Why would a 2D photo editor include this? I suspect this was a dead-end.
Yeah, probably. I’ll ask around and see if anyone else can remember what I’m talking about. It used little loops of alternating white or black filament at the perimeter to create a halftone type grayscale surface, using a regular dualstrusion printer. The amount of white or black showing was varied dot by dot to produce the grayscale image. There was a video with a soda can with a grayscale logo printed directly into it. Can’t find a thing about it online though.
Not much of a lead, but the thread is probably in Google Groups somewhere… don’t have time to hunt it down right now. “TobyCWood” does the 3D Printing Today Podcast (he’s Andy) if that helps. https://groups.google.com/d/msg/3dprintertipstricksreviews/vkBolEZUV3E/JAuX9MHIAwAJ