Optimal 3D Printing Direction for Stability of Slanted Shapes

The Fused Deposition Method (FDM) constructs objects in layers of melted material. Because the layer-by-layer construction of slanted shapes introduces a smaller bonding area between layers and significant warping, users often heuristically optimize the printing direction. We propose a novel method for selecting the optimal 3D printing direction to increase the stability of slanted shapes. Our optimal direction leads slanted subparts to be oriented either perpendicular or parallel to the build plate as much as possible. We first find a set of stable directions for the input model and then validate each of them using the following three criteria: similarity to dominant directions, stability and material cost. The experiments show that our optimal printing direction enables the given shape to be printed without undesired deformation during printing process.