MetatronSlicer

Status: early development, not yet available

Updates:

  • 2022/04/01: bringing terms/wording in-sync with Universal Slicing
  • 2022/02/26: published finally with basic information
  • 2022/02/18: copying content from “Universal Slicing” page start to focus on the slicer itself

Introduction

MetatronSlicer aims to become full functional Universal Slicer:

Universal slicing means free slicing geometry along a free path.

“free (definable) slicing geometry”: any kind of geometry, may it may a solid or just a surface defining the slicing geometry.

“free (definable) path”: the slicing procedure can go in any direction, curvature and steps.

See Universal Slicing for more thorough description and theoretical examples.

Implementing Universal Slicing

As I was proposing the concept of “Universal Slicing”, I had the impulse to start an implementation right away in order to produce illustrations for the concept.

  • MetatronSlicer aims to become full Universal Slicer, it’s not optimized for speed but to be capable as of completeness.
  • EnochSlicer is a sister project which takes research results from development of MetatronSlicer and tries to find a more efficient way to achieve the same or a subset.

Universal Slicer: MetatronSlicer

MetatronSlicer is the first attempt of an Universal Slicer (2022/02), which implements for a start planar-slicing of non-planar slicing geometries, for example a wave-like geometry:

wave-like geometry, partially sliced, fully sliced 20mm cube, even slices
20mm cube wave-like sliced
20mm cube wave-like sliced at 0.25mm layer height

The wave-like geometry was defined via Bezier curves.

Via some transformations back and forth the in-house LabSlicer and g-code produced non-planar slice:

  • the green represents the ideal 3D slice,
  • the yellow/golden are the extrusions,
  • the red dots indicate the start of a G1 extrusion segment.

As of MetatronSlicer 0.0.8 (still very experimental as of 2022/02) it was possible to produce printable G-code:

and then printed on a 3-axis FDM (Ashtar K #2 Prusa-Mendel style) machine with apprx. 3mm vertical nozzle spacing 2), the wave-like reference geometry was slighted scaled in Z to comply to this physical contraint:

full print at 1x speed with a few skips
MetatronSlicer: toward implementing Universal Slicing capabilities

A few samples of non-planar geometries slicing 20mm cube:

Class 1 Universal Slicing: Planar Slicing with Non-Planar Geometries: cube (planar), hemisphere (convex), hemisphere inverse (concave), conic, wave-like, nurbs, tilted, pimple-like

Convex hemispherical slice geometry slicing 20mm cube:

Concave hemispherical slice geometry slicing 20mm cube:

Conic slice geometry slicing 20mm cube:

which essentially replaces Slicer4RTN.

As of 2022/02 MetatronSlicer is still in very early development, but eventually aims to implement also variable slicing geometries and variable slicing vector such as:

Class 2 Universal Slicing: Variable Slice Geometry / Variable Slicing Path

MetatronSlicer vs EnochSlicer

MetatronSlicer implements true non-planar slicing and routes each slice exact, whereas EnochSlicer using pre- and post transformation of mesh and routes (pre g-code).

As development of an Universal Slicer is in early stage (2022/03), both projects are pushed forward to see which one is more fit and suitable and cross-fertilize each other.

MetatronSlicerEnochSlicer
meshplaintransformation
slicingnon-planarplanar
routededicated 1)–
gcodededicated 1)native 2)
post processingplaintransformation

Footnotes:

  1. utilizing LabSlicerCore library
  2. native via planar slicer (direct mesh to gcode) like CuraEngine

Availability

MetatronSlicer and alike EnochSlicer are in early development, and will be tuned for industrial 3D printing applications for 3- and 5-axis FDM.

Sometime during 2022 one or both might become available as commercial products in order to fund future development, unless I find another way to fund the research and development – in that case an open source “community edition” is possible.

References

In-House Slicers

LabSlicerVox3lSlicerVoxGLSlicerMetatronSlicerEnochSlicer
– full planar slicer
– 4 stages: mesh, slice, route, gcode
– experimental
– API defined
– LabSlicerCore library
– import/export data of each stage		– voxel-based planar slicer
– fast slicing
– uses LabSlicerCore library for route and gcode stage
– OpenGL based planar slicer
– fast slicing
– uses LabSlicerCore library for route and g-code stage		– non-planar slicer
– implements Class 1 + 21) Universal Slicing
– uses OpenZCAD2) engine to slice non-planar		– non-planar slicer
– implements Class 1 + 21) Universal Slicing
– uses mesh & gcode transformation

Footnotes:

  1. Class 2 Universal Slicing only partially implemented (status 2022/03)
  2. OpenZCAD is alike OpenSCAD but with Python as base-language with multiple backends (OpenCASCADE, LibFive, Fogleman’s SDF)