QChopper - Segmentation of Large Surface Meshes for 3D Printing

Abstract

3D printers are becoming an ever-cheaper way to prototype or reproduce objects. There are difficulties that arise when attempting to reproduce very large objects with a 3D printer. Printers have a limited volume that they can print, or struggle to plan their process for very large 3D models. A solution to this problem is to segment the larger mesh into smaller parts that can be printed separately, then reassembled. In this thesis we describe various approaches to mesh segmentation and present an approach that efficiently segments very large 3D models so that they can be printed. Finally we show the results of our approach on 4 objects of increasing size and complexity.