Abstract
Several adaptive and direct slicing methods have been developed to make the slice data for RP parts with better accuracy and speed. This research deals with a new adaptive slicing algorithm that shows drastic improvement in computing time for calculating the slices of a part. First, it uses less number of sampling points fur each slice in determining the thickness of the next slice. Secondly, the idea of contour map is utilized to determine the optimal sampling point on each slice. Thirdly, the calculation efficiency is further improved by introducing vertical character lines of the given part. The results in terms of accuracy and speed are compared with the existing methods.