Spiral-Like Path Planning Without Gap for Material Deposition Processes

Contour-parallel path, also called offset path, is a commonly used deposition strategy exploited by many deposition processes. This offset path has been studied vastly due to the potential of its applications. The majority of contour-parallel path research is found in robotics, CNC machining, and metal deposition. Even though curve offsetting has been extensively studied, there is virtually no algorithm that can produce a complete connected deposition path and can fill arbitrary shape cross sections entirely without gaps. This gap problem is similar to the uncut-region problem in CNC pocket machining. There are only few investigations on this uncut-region or gap problem even though the problem has long been recognized. A new strategy to divide regions and to plan the spiral-like deposition paths without gap based on contour-parallel paths is discussed in this paper. To prove the correctness and the usefulness of the proposed method, simulations and experiments are also discussed.