A Roadmap Towards Parallel Printing for Desktop 3D Printers

Date
2021
Authors
Carton, Molly Aubrey
Nandi, Chandrakana
Anderson, Adam
Zhao, Haisen
Darulova, Eva
Grossman, Dan
Lipton, Jeffrey Ian
Schulz, Adriana
Tatlock, Zachary
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Publisher
University of Texas at Austin
Abstract

3D printers with multiple extruders (or multi­headed printers) are common in the desktop fabrication community, but are primarily used for multi-­color or multi-­material printing, using only one extruder at a time. What if these multi­headed desktop printers could also be used for simultaneous parallel printing? While this is a relatively unexplored direction, we argue that it deserves further investigation: a flexible, robust, and affordable parallel printing ecosystem could significantly reduce fabrication time for many applications and further enhance the value of desktop rapid prototyping. We propose a research agenda to explore the development of a parallel printing pipeline, and summarize our observations from a preliminary investigation of simultaneous extrusion. We hope this vision will encourage and guide future research in developing hardware, firmware, and slicers to facilitate parallel 3D printing.

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