A new nonplanar slicer has been released as open source. What could this mean for 3D printing?
YouTuber Joshua Bird recently published a video detailing the development of his new specialized 3D print slicing software, S4. The main feature of this software is that it can produce GCODE that operates in a nonplanar mode. This means that instead of building a part layer by layer, the toolhead can move in three dimensions while printing.
The benefit of doing so is that you no longer have any need for support structures: instead you simply rotate the toolhead appropriately and print the overhang upside down. This is how true three dimensional movement can change printing.
The S4 software uses an incredibly simple approach:
- Distort the 3D model so that it does not have overhangs
- Slice the distorted 3D model using conventional layer-by-layer slicing software
- Adjust the resulting GCODE to undistort the print back to the original intended geometry
This transforms the “layers” into bended paths that sweep strangely through the print.
Does this work? Bird tested the approach by 3D printing an upside-down #3DBenchy, perhaps one of the worst possible overhang scenarios. The result turned out quite well, but more importantly demonstrated the versatility of the S4 slicer: if it can handle that scenario, it should be able to handle almost anything.
This seems quite powerful, so why aren’t we all using this type of software?
There are two main reasons.
One is hardware. Today’s FFF 3D printers are designed to print layer by layer. They do not rotate the print in progress. They do not handle overhangs.
There are multi-axis 3D printers with more than three axes available, but they are enormously expensive as compared to typical desktop FFF equipment.
The second reason is software. Software for multi-axis systems tends to be incredibly expensive and complex.
With both software and hardware costing more than you’d want to pay, it’s completely understandable why everyone would look away from four or five axis 3D printing systems.
But has this equation changed with the introduction of the S4 slicer? It is provided on GitHub with an open source license, free for anyone to use or modify.
That changes the software part of the equation, but what about the hardware part?
Bird uses a four axis system of his own design, the Core R-Theta 3D printer, which is also provided in open source form on GitHub. This design involves a rotational print plate, a rotating toolhead on a vertical axis and another axis to move the toolhead forwards and backwards.
It’s a relatively inexpensive configuration, although quite unusual.
I am now wondering if this development unlocks a new stage of nonplanar FFF 3D printing. We have a hardware design that’s free and open source. We have a software design that’s also free and open source.
Could not some entrepreneurs take these base open source tools and commercialize them by producing a bundled nonplanar 3D printer and associated slicer? This is exactly how many of the big players in FFF 3D printing got their start decades ago, so why could it not happen again?
Why couldn’t one of the big players adopt this open source technology and produce a highly usable nonplanar 3D printing system at low cost?
The expensive multi-axis 3D printers of today are much like the expensive FDM and SLA printers of years ago: expensive products waiting for a technological development to undercut their price. That’s why we have cheap 3D printers today.
This could also be why we have cheap nonplanar 3D printers in the future.
Via GitHub
