Wireframe printing (aka Low-Fi Printing)

[epoxi]

Well, maybe this it too much for asking, but the idea is brilliant!

This video explains this better --> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ea4V7kb2VsY

More info ---> http://stefaniemueller.org/WirePrint/

Cheers!
ePoxi

[trbielec]

This would be fantastic. I have seen a lot of designers charging a lot for wireframe designs of simple objects, so the style is certainly a valuable output. I would certainly use this often, especially for demos of 3D printing because the prints would print much faster.

[alranel]

Brilliant idea and implementation. And it's quite easy to implement actually...

[kefir-]

Nice, this could be useful!

[johnkraczek]

i would definately use this, it would really be awesome. i was also wondering if it would be possible to "fill" with wireframe as well, so that you dont just have a wireframe shell, but you have a "layer" of filaments spaced out.

[kefir-]

And what about using it for quick support?

[ramkam]

1st try to make it - shitty code written fast and dirty, but works (and does it differently) https://github.com/ramkam/wireframe_3d

[epoxi]

@ramkam that's very good!!! I think that the number of points should be in relation to volume and shape, instead of a mere downsample. If you have a model with a very high density of triangles (say 1M or 2M), the downsample will still be high.

Did you try to print the resulting gcode?

[ramkam]

tried printing it "just like that" ... hum... not so good yet :-) , there's lots of little stuff to do :

• handle first (brim like, make it stick) and last layers (errors)
• remove some unecessary moves / take into account the shape of the extruder
• maybe reorder the moves entirely
• find the good feedrate, extrusion temp & mark stops to cool down
• autoguess the downsample to fit target plane and z spacings
  etc.
  anyone wants to join in ? maybe we do something that can be added to slic3r (if someone can help me ramp up on how it's done in slicer ...) ?

[johnkraczek]

Hey how is this coming? are there any things that i might help with?

[alranel]

@kefir- and @kraczekj, usage of this for support or infill raises complicated issues about collision of extruder with non-wireframe printed parts...

[ramkam]

@kraczekj i havent worked much on it since then, i wonder if there are 3d geometry libraries that i can use ? Will dive again into it next week.
@alexrj agreed, it would lead to much more perimeter starts/stop blobs if used as infill or support

[anoved]

Note that a paper describing the WirePrint implementation is now available http://www.stefaniemueller.org//wp-content/themes/f8-lite/images/wireprint/2014-uist-mueller-wireprint.pdf (although the reference implementation itself is not published, to my knowledge). The web page linked above has also been updated with video and slides from the UIST presentation.

[nicksears]

We cant close both of these (#3048) because they're duplicates of each other. The other was closed because it is a duplicate, but this would be a very good option/addition.

[ramkam]

Agreed. Though, the underlying topic could be to have an "easy" to use lib to implement homebrewed slicers. Kinda like opencv does for ... Cv. Just throwing ideas (yeah ok, i think it's worth it)

[lordofhyphens]

@nicksears yeah I wouldn't close this for dupe, but I would close dupes of this :)

@ramkam I would probably start by examining the perimeter code. It would seem like a natural place to start, tracing the edges of the triangles of the mesh.

[lordofhyphens]

We received a proposal from a GSoC student for this project.

[NateTG]

usage of this for support or infill raises complicated issues about collision of extruder with non-wireframe printed parts...

It really doesn't seem like that should be particularly challenging.

[alranel]

This was my initial attempt at it:
https://github.com/alexrj/Slic3r/blob/wireframe/utils/wireframe.pl

[lordofhyphens]

@curieos

[croisez]

is this wireframe feature abandoned?

[curieos]

@croisez
I still have interest in working on the feature, it will probably get less of my attention when I do get back to work though.

[css911]

@alranel is this still open will like to work on it, for gsoc 2022

[supermerill]

If you want to work on it, to be able to be reused in the all-c++ codebase, I advise to work on the c++ side of the thing.
Imo, it's maybe possible to integrate an option next to the "spiral vase" (same kind of thing) that, as the spiral vase, force many settings to a certain value (no infill, etc). Then, in the slicing process, instead of doing the normal perimetergenerator, it switches to your new class & method for creating the 3D paths.

If you get the merill_merge branch, you have at your disposal 3DPath objects that you can add into the ExtrusionEntityCollection. If you add the collection to the object's 'perimeter' one, it will be printed by the gcode part of the slicer. Set "no_sort" in the collection if the order of the paths is important (that tag only pally for the current collection, not the one sorted inside, so tag each collection that shouln't be shuffled at gcode creation).

[css911]

Hi @supermerill thanks for the reply, will checkout the merill_merge branch. one query I had apart from Freenode is there any other communication forum that our org utilizes?

[supermerill]

I have a discord, for the branch: 4TVUG4VRzP