A cylindrical path planning approach for additive manufacturing of revolved components

Depositing on inclined cylindrical surfaces has recently gained interest due to its potential for directly employing feedstock that forms part of the printed structure. In this paper, we present our approach to perform cylindrical path planning through converting a planar slicing data structure into a universal 3D polar data structure. This has the advantage of using off-the-shelf slicing software and adapting it for cylindrical path planning. Our approach is capable of generating cylindrical print paths of various patterns such as linear raster, circular raster, hybrid contour, and zigzag path. We demonstrate the capability of the approach to planning cylindrical print paths for two different revolved components employing these three different printing patterns. Actual printing experiments and tensile tests of the cylindrical part using wire-arc additive manufacturing were conducted and reported. It was found that they yield an average tensile strength that matches the strength of the 4340 feedstock.