An Algorithm for Splitting a Box by a Loop and Its Applications in Manufacturing

  • Kheerwal, Anoop (Computer Graphics Laboratory, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology) ;
  • Shanmuganathan, Vivekananda (Computer Graphics Laboratory, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology) ;
  • Shringi, Rohitashwa (Computer Graphics Laboratory, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology) ;
  • Karunakaran, Karuna P. (Computer Graphics Laboratory, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology)
  • Published : 2003.12.31

Abstract

During the design of dies and molds, the cavity of the object is obtained by subtracting it from a surrounding rectangular block. This box is subsequently split into two halves by the parting surface. Similar problems also occur in some RP processes such as LOM, SGC, SLS and 3DP where the machine produces a block inside which the prototype is buried. Determining the orientation of the object inside the box and the corresponding parting surface taking appropriate constraints into account have been addressed by several researchers. However, given the parting surface, the problem of splitting the box development of a software package called OptiLOM (now a module of an RP software Magics 8.0), the authors realized non-triviality of this problem since the loop can spread over as many as 5 faces of the box. In this paper, the authors have tried to bring out the importance of this problem and have presented their algorithm to solve it.

Keywords

References

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