The explosive growth of three-dimensional printing has created a new paradigm of manufacturing for everyone. As the price of extrusion and other devices go lower, more and more people partake of the phenomenon with no end in sight, initiating a new age of manufacturing. Eventually these devices will be in every home and the creation or re-creation of three-dimensional objects will become as commonplace as Xerox copying.
Various conventional techniques of three-dimensional printing use a single head, for example, an extrusion head which deposits material as a point source onto a planar surface or a laser head that moves a laser point by point to cure or harden material. Typically, current 3D printing machines take many hours or perhaps days to deposit or process the materials necessary to instantiate a design, such as from a computer-aided design (CAD) or other program or code.
With further advances in this technology, the need arises for even more ways to improve the throughput and efficiencies of these revolutionary devices. Indeed, many new approaches and paradigms are still needed for this technology to make the leap from revolutionary to customary for a home, and the instant invention is such a paradigm.
There is, therefore, a need for devices, systems and methodologies to better the processes for three-dimensional printing techniques, e.g., increase the speed of additive creation and the speed of laser sintering, and better satisfy the growing needs of a populace eager to engage this new technology.
USPTO Backgrounds
USPTO Backgrounds