Five-Axis Freeform Surface Color Printing Technology Based on Offset Curve Path Planning Method

Great progress has been made in 2D color printing with inkjet technology, and mature related products have come out, but there still exists great developmental space in 3D color printing. Therefore, a new path planning method based on the offset curve for 3D inkjet technology is proposed in this paper. Offset curves are generated on a freeform surface with geodesic equidistance, and then points for color printing are generated along the offset curves. In this paper, the principle of color printing technology with a 5-axis platform and the offset curve path planning (OCPP) method are presented. In addition, comparisons between the OCPP and adaptive filling algorithm based on the section method (AFSM) have been implemented. The OCPP significantly increased the rate of the theoretical filling area from 0.89 to 0.99 on a freeform surface.