Topology Optimization for the CLIP Manufacturing Process

Carbon

Mentors: Adrian Lew (Stanford) and Dr. Hardik Kabaria (Carbon)

Goal:

Optimize the geometry of a part, while keeping its functionality, to reduce the number of support structures needed during printing.

Problem:

When 3D printing with the CLIP process, the fluid in contact with the part pulls it and deforms it, leading to changes in geometry if supports are not added. 

Since functionality of a part can be often mantained while performing selected changes in the geometry, it is possible to optimize the shape of the part to minimize the number of supports needed. 

The following figure shows an example in which, under the constraint of keeping the bottom part as a spherical cap, alternative geometries for the the top part are considered to minimize the number of supports needed while printing. 

What did the team do?

This project required the team to build a Matlab script to connect different software tools to automatically alter a geometry in a prescribed way, perform its slicing, the tetrahedral mesh generation  and  finite element analysis of each sliced geometry to compute the resulting deformations. Then the team created an algorithm to automaticallly and progressively add supports and perform the analysis of the resulting deformations, until tolerances were met.

The supports considered for the spherical cap above are shown in red in the figure below, as well as the curve indicating the number of supports needed to satisfy the geometric tolerances for each geometry.