You are reading a single comment by @Isotropic and its replies.
Click here to read the full conversation.
-
Theres all kinds of reasons it would want to jump about. Residual stress is a big one, if you had a ring and started sintering along it, so the laser takes a circular path, the residual stress is huge. By breaking it up into sections it can reduce the residual stress.
If you had two parts really close together (I print parts with a 0.3mm gap), you need leaked thermal energy to dissipate between printing each side, otherwise material can bridge the gap.
The laser direction also alters the material properties, its strongest in the direction of the laser sweeping (i think), this generic pattern is an attempt to make it uniform (but you can do very clever stuff to make it strongest in the direction you want).
Isotropic
Interesting stuff. Why does the laser jump around so much while printing? Is it to allow the material to cool? It looks random but I assume there's some logic to the pattern?