Voxel-based fabrication through material property mapping: A design method for bitmap printing

Wepresent a bitmap printingmethod and digital workflow usingmulti-material high resolution Additive Manufacturing (AM). Material composition is defined based on voxel resolution and used to fabricate a design object with locally varying material stiffness, aiming to satisfy the design objective. In this workflowvoxel resolution is set by theprinter’s native resolution, eliminating theneed for slicing andpath planning. Controlling geometry and material property variation at the resolution of the printer provides significantly greater control over structure–property–function relationships. To demonstrate the utility of the bitmap printing approach we apply it to the design of a customized prosthetic socket. Pressuresensing elements are concurrently fabricated with the socket, providing possibilities for evaluation of the socket’s fit. The level of control demonstrated in this study cannot be achieved using traditional CAD tools and volume-based AM workflows, implying that new CAD workflows must be developed in order to enable designers to harvest the capabilities of AM. © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.