Make It Stand solves the 3D print balance problem
Like anything else, 3D printed objects are subject to the force of gravity. That’s typically not a factor but in the case of objects that have to stand or hang in a particular way, such as a horse poised on just two legs, the ability of an object to use its center of gravity to maintain the correct orientation becomes vitally important. In a technical paper delivered during last week’s SIGGRAPH conference, the authors demonstrated some fresh thinking that could go a long way to allowing users to balance their objects by employing two main degrees of freedom to carve and deform an object to reach equilibrium.
Watch the video that shows the process in action:
http://3dprintsoftheworld.com/blog/make-it-stand-solves-3d-print-balance-problem
#3dprinting
It’s not going to help those of us using FDM because sparse infill means inconsistent density. It would be cool to have a slicer option to vary infill density throughout a part to control the balance, though. That would allow us to print things that balance while looking like they shouldn’t.
@Whosa_whatsis it could be useful for FDM if you printed the rest of the model at 100% fill - i’d think that their algorithm would have some way to adjust the overall cavity volume and therefore save on raw material and cost.
If you were to calculate the center of mass for a hollow object and then for a filled object and interpolated just to have a “quick and dirty” solution, I think it could work.
Yeah, that would get you close, assuming your infill pattern is small enough compared to the size and features of the object that the average density of any arbitrarily defined portion of the volume is pretty close to the average (as would be the case with 100% fill).
