Irregular Packing for Additive Manufacturing

In modern additive manufacturing technologies, parts are printed in a special container named the printer working chamber. The efficiency of volume filling with geometric objects is an important factor in the overall efficiency of the manufacturing process. To improve the efficiency of the production process, it is necessary to develop effective methods for packing objects in the working chamber of a 3D printer. The problem of filling the working chamber with parts is formulated as a three-dimensional irregular packing problem and presented as a nonlinear optimization problem. The article presents an origin optimization approach for tackling irregular packing problems for additive manufacturing. The approach involves construction of an exact mathematical model of irregular packing problem (using the phi-function technique) and development of a nonlinear optimization method based on state-of-arts solvers. The solution strategy uses the preliminary clustering of bodies to be packed and variable metric characteristics of bodies and a chamber. An exact mathematical model of the problem is constructed and a solution method is developed. Test results are shown.