A 3D Continuous Path Generation Method and Evaluation for Fused Deposition Manufacturing in Tissue Engineering

Although 3D printing has been widely used in tissue engineering and biomaterial printing, the method of global continuous path planning and its performance in tissue engineering have not been thoroughly explored. This paper presents a spatial continuous path planning method which used in tissue engineering to improve mechanical properties of scaffolds. Firstly, 2D connected regions are extracted from the sliced data of the model and the processing sequence is generated. Then 2D continuous fill pattern is constructed for each connected region. Finally, all connected regions are interconnected in the order of processing sequence to generate a global continuous tool path. Samples with different fill patterns, printing parameters and inter-layer relationship are fabricated and evaluated. At the same time, bio-material printing with gelatin is used to verify its feasibility. The results show that the continuous path can be used by biomaterial which avoid cutting operations and improve the mechanical properties of the printed model.