Printing atom-efficiently: faster fabrication of farther unsupported overhangs by fluid dynamics simulation

While resin 3D printing affords designers unprecedented geometric complexity, currently the technology requires cumbersome support structures that are not user-friendly in numerous ways: materially wasteful, human labor-intensive, time-consuming to remove, damaging to surface finish, and often unreliable in ensuring printability in the first place. Inspired by recent physical demonstrations that injecting liquid through an embedded channel can neutralize suction during printing, we discover this phenomenon can also significantly reduce the quantity of supports required by a user's model, or entirely obviate them for certain product geometries. We show our fluid dynamics simulation-guided design tool, applied to an off-the-shelf 3D printer with an inexpensive syringe pump add-on, enables designers to more quickly fabricate otherwise unprintable overhang geometries without support.