A continuous toolpath strategy from offset contours for robotic additive manufacturing

Toolpath planning is an essential component of robotic additive manufacturing. An efficient toolpath strategy allows parts to be made that are geometrically accurate, free of defects, have good mechanical properties and have low residual stress. Toolpaths for cold spray additive manufacturing have some technical constraints that need to be considered compared to their counterpart designed for conventional 3D printing machines. This study presents an automated toolpath planning method based on offset contours. The generated toolpath is globally continuous, layer-wise setting, making it suitable for robotic cold spray additive manufacturing. The toolpath algorithm was tested on a variety of geometries to demonstrate its robustness. One model was selected for printing using a commercial high-pressure cold spray system. The experimental results show that our method is applicable to cold spray robotic additive manufacturing for near-net shape construction. The method is particularly good for web-rib structures.