• Journal of the Korean Society for Precision Engineering
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• v.25 no.3
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• pp.157-164
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• 2008

While developing physical prototype from CAD model, rapid prototyping mainly focuses on two key points reducing time and material consumption. So, we have to change from a traditional solid model to building a hollowed prototype. In this paper, a new method is presented to hollow out solid objects with uniform wall thickness to increase RP efficiency. To achieve uniform wall thickness, it is necessary to generate internal contour by slicing the offset model of an STL model. Due to many difficulties in this method, this paper proposes a new algorithm that computes internal contours computing offset model which is generated from external contour using wall thickness. Proposed method can easily compute the internal contour by slicing the offset surface defined by the sum of circle swept volumes of external contours without actual offset and the circle wept volumes. Internal contour existences are confirmed by using the external point. Presented algorithm uses the 2D geometric algorithm allowing RP implementation more efficient. Various examples have been tested with implementation of the algorithm, and some examples are presented for illustration.