Continuity Path Planning for 3D Printed Lightweight Infill Structures

In order to avoid problems such as empty travel in 3D printing path planning, which will affect printing time and quality, this paper proposes a solution based on The Chinese postman problem in graph theory to optimize printing head moving path planning. Each slice of the lightweight filling model was regarded as a graph. After preprocessing, the Euler path was constructed by deleting edges and adding edges. Hierholzer algorithm was used to find the Euler path in the graph, and finally the global continuous printing path of each slice was obtained. Compared with the existing commercial slicing software Slic3r and Cura, the printing path of the model filled with lightweight structure is planned, and the effectiveness of the algorithm is verified. The algorithm effectively reduces the start-stop action of the printing head, saves the printing consumables and improves the printing efficiency.