A case study of swept volume representation of tissue scaffolds

Solid freeform fabrication (SFF) techniques represent a class of manufacturing processes for creating 3D tissue scaffolds. A SFF method being developed at Drexel uses material deposition of polymers from a nozzle that undergoes piecewise linear motion in the plane. This work develops a process model for this manufacturing device using a swept volume representation of the capabilities of the tool. Specifically, a swept volume describes the tool path information and defines the scaffold to be fabricated. This swept volume based model can be used to simulate the scaffold fabrication process, to generate a virtual scaffold prototyping, and to detect and evaluate the scaffold process errors.