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CCL_Clay3DP

A Rhino 8 plugin that turns a Rhino 3D part into a robot program for clay 3D printing on the CCL-ALTAR-01 cell — geometry in, KUKA program out, no intermediate STL or G-code.

Status: Alpha 1.2.1 — actively used at the CyberCraft Lab, not feature-frozen, not independently audited. Generated robot programs MUST be reviewed in RoboDK simulation before running on real hardware.

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Hardware at a glance

Cell	CCL-ALTAR-01
Robot	KUKA KR 10 R1100-2
Extruder	StoneFlower BIG (2.5 L ram, M92 E62.5)
Default nozzle	2.5 mm
Stack	Rhino 8 → CCL_Clay3DP plugin → RoboDK → KUKA CNC ISG post

What this is (and isn't)

CCL_Clay3DP is developed at the CyberCraft Lab (CCL), Ostbayerische Technische Hochschule (OTH) Regensburg, by Prof. Christophe Barlieb. The plugin is tightly coupled to the CCL-ALTAR-01 cell — named RoboDK frames, a specific KUKA model, a custom post-processor. It is not a general-purpose clay slicer.

Source is public under Apache-2.0; forks for other hardware are welcome — expect to rewrite RoboDK/RoboDKSubprocess.cs and Models/RobotSettings.cs to match your station topology. The core spiral slicer, printability analyzer, and plugin scaffolding carry over unchanged.

How a print is made, in five steps

1. Pick a Brep / mesh in Rhino.
2. Open Settings — material, tool, toolpath mode, robot, build volume.
3. Press Slice — get a baked spiral toolpath, validated against the build volume.
4. Press Analyze — heatmap shows overhang / bond / curvature risks per frame.
5. Press Send to RoboDK — RoboDK launches, the program is generated, you simulate then post-process to KUKA.

Walkthrough with screenshots: see The pipeline.

For developers

For the architectural deep-dive (every method, every cached field, every gate), see ARCHITECTURE.md in the code repo.

The Contributing page covers dev environment setup, branch conventions, and the lab's specific quirks (Eto popup centering, S1 idle, gcode-via-post-processor only).