A software architecture for a multi-axis additive manufacturing path-planning tool

Direct-deposition Additive Manufacturing technologies like Fused Deposition Modeling suffer from several drawbacks such as anisotropic mechanical properties which impair part quality. Multi-Axis Additive Manufacturing (MAAM) promises to significantly reduce these drawbacks. However, path-planning for the complex kinematics still poses a problem which has only been solved partly and for very specific applications. This paper proposes a software architecture for a general purpose path-planning tool for MAAM technologies enabling the simultaneous implementation of different strategies. The architecture is designed to be extensible, largely machine independent and enables granular multi-scale optimizations. First implementation results and illustrating examples demonstrate the modularity and extensibility.