Part orientation fused shape optimization for minimisation of print time and material waste in extrusion-based 3D printing

Jayakody, Don Pubudu Vishwana Joseph, Deng, Bailin ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0158-7670, Goonetilleke, Ravindra S., Thomas-Seale, Lauren E.J. and Kim, Hyunyoung 2026. Part orientation fused shape optimization for minimisation of print time and material waste in extrusion-based 3D printing. Computer-Aided Design 192 , 104029. 10.1016/j.cad.2025.104029

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Abstract

Support structure generation is a critical requirement in additive manufacturing (AM) to prevent material collapse in overhanging regions. However, it increases print time, material waste, and overall production cost, especially in extrusion-based AM. To mitigate these problems, design engineers often resort to manually finetuning or even redesigning prototype geometry to minimise support structures, which is time-consuming and inefficient. A direct geometric optimisation that preserves locality of shape changes whilst corresponding to the part orientation remains an underdetermined problem. In this paper, we present a novel alternating optimisation framework that finds the corresponding part geometry and orientation to minimise support structures under minimal geometric deviation. Whilst global-level support structure reduction is realised by the part orientation change, we introduce an efficient energy minimisation-based geometric optimisation framework, which is governed by a saliency-aware elementwise projections and a set of manufacturing constraints. The proposed framework is validated through extensive computational and physical printing experiments employing multiple 3D printers and support structure types, on a diverse set of complex models including topologically non-trivial parts such as gyroid structures. Our results show an average reduction of 50% in support structure print time, 27% in material usage and 25% in total print time, demonstrating the effectiveness of the proposed framework and its potential as a paradigm shift in manufacturing-oriented design.

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Published
Schools:	Schools > Computer Science & Informatics
Subjects:	Q Science > QA Mathematics > QA75 Electronic computers. Computer science Q Science > QA Mathematics > QA76 Computer software
Publisher:	Elsevier
ISSN:	0010-4485
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	19 December 2025
Date of Acceptance:	16 December 2025
Last Modified:	23 Dec 2025 10:45
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/183393

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