Teaser Three Z paper

🚀 Our Work Will Be Presented This Friday at SCF’25 at MIT!

Towards Accessible Non-Planar FFF Using Triple Z-Axis Kinematics

I’m excited to share that our latest research will be presented this Friday at the ACM Symposium on Computational Fabrication (SCF ‘25), hosted at MIT - by Giovanni Cocco and Vincent Belle.

In this work, we explore how to make non-planar fused filament fabrication (FFF) truly accessible by upgrading standard 3D printers with minimal, low-cost modifications.

🔧 What we propose:

By extending the rails and bed screws of triple Z-axis printers-such as the RatRig V-Core-we enable up to 30° of bed tilt, unlocking true non-planar 5-DOF printing without the need for robotic arms. We also introduce a complete closed-form kinematic model and an open-source Python implementation for mapping curved toolpaths to machine space.

✨ Key highlights:

  • Closed-form forward & inverse kinematics for 3-Z machines
  • Open-source implementation for toolpath conversion
  • Minimal hardware modification enabling curved-layer printing
  • Build volume, tolerance, and interpolation analysis
  • Successful fabrication of complex non-planar models

This work lowers the barrier to experimenting with advanced additive manufacturing techniques.

📄 Authors: Giovanni Cocco, Eric Garner, Vincent Belle, Cédric Zanni, and Xavier Chermain 📍 Université de Lorraine, CNRS, Inria, LORIA (Nancy, France)

👉 Read the paper: https://xavierchermain.github.io/publications/threez

We thank Pierre-Alexandre Hugron, who was crazy enough to believe that the RatRig could serve as a 5-axis 3D printer.

This work was supported by: