Upscaling Tomographic Volumetric 3D Printing via Virtual Stitching of Coordinated Projections

Abstract

Tomographic volumetric 3D printing offers layer free, rapid fabrication of objects with high design freedom, but is limited to relatively small curing volumes because of the optical constraints imposed by an assumed need for telecentricity. We present a method to virtually stitch multiple projections from different light sources to build a single workpiece. To avoid the built in requirement for telecentricity and thus the need for an index matching vat, projections are produced by a graphics processing unit accelerated raytracing solver. The method accounts for non ideal light propagation, including nontelecentricity, reflection, refraction, attenuation, as well as any output power mismatch among projectors.Tomographic volumetric 3D printing offers layer free, rapid fabrication of objects with high design freedom, but is limited to relatively small curing volumes because of the optical constraints imposed by an assumed need for telecentricity. We present a method to virtually stitch multiple projections from different light sources to build a single workpiece. To avoid the built in requirement for telecentricity and thus the need for an index matching vat, projections are produced by a graphics processing unit accelerated raytracing solver. The method accounts for non ideal light propagation, including nontelecentricity, reflection, refraction, attenuation, as well as any output power mismatch among projectors.