Parallelized Additive Manufacturing of Variably Partitioned Volumes for Large Scale 3D Printing With Localized Quality

Despite the growing application of additive manufacturing (AM) in fabricating complex designs, most machines suffer from small working envelopes and slow processing speeds. One workaround to the problem of small throughput in AM is to partition the volume of a desired object and fabricate sub-volumes in parallel. Prior related work has focused on two problems. One is the geometric division problem, disregarding AM benefits and challenges in determining partitions. Others attempt to install multiple AM processing heads on the same machine, ensuring seamless bonding between deposited material from different heads while avoiding interference among them. A missed opportunity lies in deploying many independent machines simultaneously while considering benefits and limitations of AM. To that end, objects too large to be fabricated on one machine, are divided primarily into cubes that exploit benefits of AM. Specifically, the cubes are hollowed out in the direction of printing to reduce weight while avoiding the need for support structure, and depending on load conditions, packed in different orientations to mitigate material anisotropy.