Build orientation becomes a hot issue in 3D printing, which has a significant impact on the surface quality, support structure and final cost of the fabricated model. In this paper, we focus our attention on the surface quality of the part when fabricated by a 3D printer under certain specific build orientation. A novel method using curvature shift is proposed to search local regions with obvious curvature changes of the model printed. Based on curvature shift strategy, the model is divided into separate regions which can be treated differently. Every triangle facet of the regions is given different weight factor by calculating the average curvature of each region. Weighted facets is introduced in building volume error function. Candidate build orientation can be obtained by the eigenvalue decomposition and the optimal build orientation is the one which leads to the minimal error of the function. From the case study, the method proposed gets a smaller error with a lower printing cost and time, which means the model surface in higher weighted regions gets a higher surface quality when printed.
RP part surface quality versus build orientation: when the layers are getting thinner
