Automating the production planning of a 3D printing factory

To increase a 3D printer´s throughput and decrease the print objects´ lead times, composing good batches for 3D printers in high-volume 3D printing environments is of great importance. Since manual planners cannot oversee the whole production planning, they tend to make sub-optimal decisions. This paper presents a two-stage procedure that automatically generates batches for multiple 3D printers. The first stage consists of allocating objects to a batch. This problem is an extension of the classical one-dimensional bin packing problem by including lateness and object size mixture requirements. In the second stage, the positions of the print objects in a tray are determined by using third party three-dimensional packing software. By simulating the production planning of Shapeways, a popular 3D printing marketplace, model parameters are calibrated and the performance of the two-stage procedure is evaluated. The results show an increase of the throughput of the 3D-printers by approximately 10% in comparison with manually created batches.