Tool path generation of multi‐material assembly for rapid manufacture

Tool path generation is the key procedure to fabricate multi‐material (MM) assemblies in rapid prototyping (RP) machines. In slicing MM assembly, there will be 2D regions of different materials. The regions need to be filled into 2.5D slabs. In order to complete all regions in a certain slice faster, tool holders should fill the regions simultaneously. In other words, the tool holders will move around in the RP work envelope concurrently. In such case, interference between tool holders may occur. Therefore, collision‐free path plan should be generated. In this paper, a dexel based spatio‐temporal modelling approach is proposed for detecting collision in rapid manufacturing MM assemblies. The approach is based on 2D regions in dexel representation, which needs only simple computation. As a result, tool holders can fill MM regions simultaneously and efficiently.