Is this possible, " 3D Printing with MATLAB ". If so, How far I could go with it ?

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Padmanathan on 19 Nov 2023

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Commented: Padmanathan on 22 Nov 2023

3D Printing with MATLAB, I need to know the far possibilities of the mentioned and the procedure. From the requested Answer, I should gain some knowledge in using MATLAB functions to define a real life object or a body and feed the obtained data to a 3D Printer. Finally, I should be able to compare and contrast "3D Printing with MATLAB" with the traditional one.

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John D'Errico on 19 Nov 2023

Edited: John D'Errico on 19 Nov 2023

What you need to explain is exactly what you would use MATLAB to do here. Yes, you can use MATLAB to generate some sort of file that describes some object. That would take some effort to learn to do, but is entirely possible, and probably not at all difficult once you learn how. Having done that now you need only to be able to use some other tool, that can take the file as output. At that point, MATLAB is now completely disconnected from the process. A virtue of this approach is it makes the problem now easy to solve, and easy to debug. If there is a probem, you need only verify if the file describes the correct object. If the object is correct, then any further problem lies in how you are using that file.

But really, the above scheme does not seem to be what you are asking. It sounds like you actually want MATLAB to drive the 3-d printer directly, not just generate a file that descries an object.

Anyway, my honest opinion is MATLAB is not the tool you want to use for this, because this task is a bit outside of the set of things MATLAB does well. Can you use a hammer to drive a screw into wood, when a screwdriver is a far better tool for the task? Well, yes. But I doubt the result will be one that makes you happy.

Walter Roberson on 19 Nov 2023

This sounds like a project that you are intended to spend your time investigating, rather than having someone give you the solution.

DGM on 19 Nov 2023

Edited: DGM on 19 Nov 2023

"I need to know the far possibilities of the mentioned and the procedure." You're literally asking for the specific details of something you haven't yet defined. Even if we could concoct an answer, it would by definition encompass varied extreme possibilites of differing purpose. By what means would you even hope to perform a meaningful comparison -- and to what would it be appropriate to compare the differing possibilities?

I could think of various application areas off the top of my head.

Part design optimization
3D model generation/manipulation
Print preparation (hollowing, infill/raft/support generation)
Slicing and path generation for point/line processes such as FDM/SLS
Slicing and slice processing (erosion/AA) for raster processes such as MSLA
Printer-specific file encoding
Printer communications and process management
Direct printer control (i.e. embedded)

This is just a subset that I've assumed are plausibly approachable with complete disregard for practicality. Is there some other alternative software suite which covers these possibilities out of the box? If I wrote some code to optimize the geometry of a specific widget I wanted to print, to what alternative would I compare it?

Even if we narrow this down to "How can I develop a minimal concept->model->print workflow using MATLAB", I still don't think it's specific enough to be answered. I definitely don't think there's room for a meaningful comparison unless you also clearly define "the traditional one" and some objective means of comparison between all the varied aspects of both. As far as I see it, both sides of this comparison are still too vague for a comparision to be meaningful.

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Answer 1

Steven Lord on 19 Nov 2023

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https://au.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/2049182-is-this-possible-3d-printing-with-matlab-if-so-how-far-i-could-go-with-it#answer_1356032

There are some old blog posts where people have discussed creating shapes in MATLAB and converting them into the file format used by 3d printers. See Paul Prints the L-Shaped Membrane for one of those posts.

Since that post was written, there have been two functions added to MathWorks products that may be of interest, the stlwrite function in MATLAB and the stlwrite function in Antenna Toolbox. The function in MATLAB writes triangulation or some types of delaunayTriangulation objects to STL files while the function in Antenna Toolbox is specific to certain types of objects from that toolbox.