Speedup Method for Paper-Based 3D Color Printing Based on STL File

Abstract

Most paper-based 3D color printers are plagued by the problem of slow printing speed, which is caused by the double-sided coloration for A4 office paper during the printing process. In order to resolve this issue, we propose a new fast and reliable coloration algorithm using geometric information in STL file, given the existing slicing methods. During the entire process, the colored surface is determined by D value that represents the positive or negative slope of layer in the 3D model after slicing. Colored inks with corresponding permeability are used to print single-sided or double-sided to accelerate the printing speed. For the given 3D models, the efficiency of the speedup is discussed and qualitatively analyzed. The results show that the proposed algorithm can increase the printing speed of paper-based 3D color printers, based on the existing materials and apparatus, at a lower cost than the common approaches.