Back in November we first brought you word of a slicing technique by which the final strength of 3D printed parts could be considerably improved by adjusting the first layer height of each wall so that subsequent layers would interlock like bricks. It was relatively easy to implement, didn’t require anything special on the printer to accomplish, and testing showed it was effective enough to pursue further. Unfortunately, there was some patent concerns, and it seemed like nobody wanted to be the first to step up and actually implement the feature.
Well, as of today, [Roman Tenger] has decided to answer the call. As explained in the announcement video below, the company that currently holds the US patent for this tech hasn’t filed a European counterpart, so he feels he’s in a fairly safe spot compared to other creators in the community. We salute his bravery, and wish him nothing but the best of luck should any lawyer come knocking.
So how does it work? Right now the script supports PrusaSlicer and OrcaSlicer, and the installation is the same in both cases — just download the Python file, and go into your slicer’s settings under “Post-Processing Scripts” and enter in its path. As of right now you’ll have to provide the target layer height as an option to the script, but we’re willing to bet that’s going to be one of the first things that gets improved as the community starts sending in pull requests for the GPL v3 licensed script.
There was a lot of interest in this technique when we covered it last, and we’re very excited to see an open source implementation break cover. Now that it’s out in the wild, we’d love to hear about it in the comments if you try it out.
Thanks to [greg_bear] in the Hackaday Discord for the tip.
There’s also Z pinning that’s worth reading about. The idea is to make a hole that’s 3 or 4 layer deep and when the hotend is on top of the hole, it’s simply letting the plastic flow into it, plugin the hole and giving a high strength to the part. The paper measured almost isotropy for parts made this way, which is really impressive. Another advantage is that is made in the infill section of the print, it’s completely transparent to the part exterior, reversing the general idea that infill makes the part less strong.
Interesting! I’ve wanted to use a similar trick for printing unfilled pp. Basically make a raft with holes from e.g. petg and then fill them with pp to form mechanically locking anchor points for the pp print using an AMS or similar system, but haven’t tried it yet. Do you have a link to the paper?
Neat! Thanks for mentioning this – definitely a “that’s so obvious I can’t believe I didn’t think of it before” moment for me.
I wonder why Z pinning hasn’t been pursued more by the open source community (or commercially). maybe it’s still just too situational and niche?
I can see it would be much more complicated to automate in a slicer than the bricklaying technique – you need a complex infill-type algorithm that can figure out where to put the pins inside the part, and figuring out how to handle anything less than ~100% infill seems trickier still.
It would also presumably be a lot more dependent on having a well-calibrated machine and the proper materials, since it needs to precisely fill up each of the pins – too little plastic and you lose a lot of the benefits, too much and you’d have a failed part and/or a spectacular mess.
All that said, even if you had to do it “by hand” – manually specifying pin size and placement during design – it seems like it could be a very useful technique to have available.
From a materials standpoint you can do quite a range of things like this from crack-interruptor anisotropies/cavities to actual rearrangement of the “layers” into a series of vertical columns. It would be interesting to see if the layers could be staggered in the z-axis while continuing to be aligned on the x-axis, then reversing/modifying this as the y-axis prints progress. At some point this becomes a 100% infill pattern used in the wall layers, and should give some of us something to geek out over for a while.
Should be part of the slicer, with a note to only enable it if you outside US.
it should not be patent or even able to be patented. Ridiculous.
I’m not remotely a lawyer, but my understanding was that there are treaties where, if you apply for or receive a patent in one jurisdiction, you get a certain period of time where that will be honored in other jurisdictions even if you haven’t yet filed locally. Also I suspect you can still be sued in the US if the file is available there. And it would still be expensive even if the patent is obvious bullshit. In fact, bullshit patents are probably more hazardous than serious ones, as they’re created specifically with extortion in mind.
Which is to say: if you’re going to do stuff like this, I think it is wise to do it anonymously.
A patent is a NATIONAL monopoly right. A US patent is worth exactly nothing outside the US, e.g. in Europe (and vise versa).
The period you are referring to is the priority year. After having filed a patent APPLICATION at date X in a country of the PCT (patent cooperation treaty) or to some extent of the WTO, you have a time limit of one year to file the very same application in other countries of the PCT to claim date X there as the filing date, too.
Please do not confuse applications for a patent and granted patents.
I don’t think patents matter at all, unless you make a product that you want to sell.
No one can tell you what software you can write and run on your pc, as long as you don’t break copy right or try to sell it.
So, as I understand it, Prusa could not add the feature to their slicer version, but if someone made an opensource plugin/postprocess script, you could use that no problem in the slicer.
In the US, patents apply to any infringing thing you make regardless of whether you sell it. The sale of the infringing item just increases the damages.
That seems to be different from Europe. Best I know, here you’re free to make patented things, but you can’t sell the goods. I think you can even take a patented drawing, and then order a company to make that thing for you without getting into patent trouble.
But more importantly:
It’s high time somebody should put a stop to the ability to patent trivial things.
There is no exception for hobbyists. However, If you aren’t selling or distributing a product there aren’t really damages.
https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2024/06/28/2024-14164/experimental-use-exception-request-for-comments
Very good background read on the R&D exemption in the US, and a demonstration that the patent office was thinking of widening it up to harmonize with Europe, which has a broader statutory exemption.
US patent law has very narrowly allowed “fair use” provision.
Generally, you are only allowed to experimentally test a patented technology for purposes of validation, discovery, or amusement. However, You are not allowed to utilize patented technology.
The courts have consistently viewed this exemption to preclude the continued use of patented technology whether for commercial or personal purposes.
If you are found to be infringing upon a patent you may be sued whether or not you sought to profit from it.
So unless you mean “if they dont catch me its legal” Your understanding is incorrect, at least within the law of the US.
While the continued personal use would be difficult to detect, prove, and prosecute, the release of an open source “plug in”, plan, or other public disclosure of means would be a very easy violation for a patent holder to pursue action against.
The courts are so biased towards patent holders rights our own attorney strongly advises against even attempting to tread on the experimental testing of active patents. YMMV
Let me get this right, a layering technique that has been in use throughout human history (see walls built in the early history of man) that is put on paper by some schmuck who spends about 10k to patent it is all the sudden something WE need to pay said schmuck to use.
Will said Schmuck pay the bricklayers or the stone masons, or any of the other myriad of trades that have been using a layering technique for centuries a licensing fee for the idea?
When I see what passes for a patent that is something like this or a Sagan of things they show on SharkTank I cringe. At the turn of the century when new products were being built and REAL new ideas were coming to market (and that’s the point – COMING TO MARKET) idea patents made sense. Now it’s a free for all dump for any screwy or good idea that somebody (and let’s be frank, it’s just that you got the paperwork in first, not that you thought of it first) comes up with.
The people that approve the patent process need to have a filter. If it’s just a “hey, how about a product that keeps you warm like this” and has no prototype or plan to market it, they should say “next”. But greed triumphs over real innovation.
The idea of offset layers in building isn’t new, but at some point the idea of applying it to 3D printing was. Patents have claims, and they’re very specific about not just what idea is being claimed, but also in what domain. In that sense, they absolutely can claim it in the 3D printing application if nobody has previously.
Along with many other armchair lawyers, I believe this was probably claimed in the long-expired foundational Stratisys patent, but I dunno. Once it’s claimed, though, it can’t get claimed again, so the patent that everyone’s worried about may be invalid. But this is an issue for the courts.
I will say that I follow 3D printing developments reasonably closely, and the idea/application was new to me.
So you can apply an offset to 3D printing and that’s a new idea? At best it’s a modification of an old one. The only thing that changed was the working material.
And unless they’ve built their own and are actively marketing it others should be allowed to abscond with the patent with the original owner of it given a modest sum.
You can take an existing product, say a lightbulb, and place it inside another existing product, say a refrigerator, and it is a new patentable thing.
It doesn’t work quite like that. Trivial ideas can’t (or should not be able to) be patented. Putting a lightbulb inside X is quite trivial.
And i would argue that just applying offset in 3D prints is quite trivial. There is no way this should have even gotten a patent, but you know, USPTO.
I don’t disagree in general, but how would you define “coming to market”, and enforce or confirm such requirements as part of the patent process?
The whole thing is too complicated to fit in my brain all at one time.
don’t have a good answer for that. But if you every rabbit hole down the Patent website and see what utter junk is in there you’d wonder why the Governments bother at all.
things like “A material that magically cleans up the kitchen” can be a valid patent (or so it seems.)
a working prototype is key. Prove it works or get out of the way. Maybe give the person a year or two to move from prototype to attempt to market? There’s got to be a way to clear the decks of a bunch of ideas that don’t go anywhere..
Oh, no doubt that there are some crazy things that go on there. As I recall from many years ago, one guy I knew applied for a unique method/device for attaching roof tiles to ridge vents. Response from patent office: no prior art cited, no references made to similar functionality or mechanism anywhere in any world real or imagined to back up their assertion in any way, but denied the patent for being too obvious. I didn’t think it was obvious. Neither did others experienced in the relevant field.
I left the organization before I heard how the appeal went.
Then I hear about some of the vague, hand-wavy garbage that does get patented. Maybe the trick is to submit something that the examiner can’t understand so they’ll think it’s novel. I dunno. Kinda soured me on the idea of applying for a patent for some of the stuff I was working on at the time.
There is a filter, it’s the disclosure of prior art. THe gap is you are only required to disclose what you know, thus making it counter-productive to search too hard for said prior art. Doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist…
Many patents get invalidated because prior art is “discovered”.
There is also the POSITA test – “Person Ordinarily Skilled In The Art”. You aren’t expected to know EVERYTHING ever known about the field of an invention, but are expected to know the ordinary stuff and thus that it can’t be patented.
I think the bottom-line might be that adding this to PrusaSlicer and OrcaSlicer, is an operation that the “user” could accomplish with a little homework. And, if people use open sources printers and can use either of these they have it withing their grasp patent or not. Nobody has to add this brick layer functionality official to any slicer, they just have to know the script to insert into those two open slicers and the knowhow of how that works, correct.
Looking at the code, the post processing script doesn’t deal with overhang or anything with supports. It’ll work for a plain convex object (like a cube, a sphere, a cylinder…) but will fail on a concave object, at soon as, for example, you have multiple level top surface, the intermediary top surface will be shifted in Z. It’s not ready for prime time yet.
Yay! Someone actually looked at the script rather than gonch on about the legalities – thank you! I was considering implementing this and am glad I held off.
Will this work on a Bambu?
Anyone have an answer?
It’s a garbage patent. Prior art: real bricks going back millenia. Doesn’t mean people aren’t going to troll, or that it won’t cost somebody a fortune, but it’s still a garbage patent. If everyone looked at patents before making stuff, literally nothing would be built, ever. Which is just how the incumbents like it. It’s never getting better, so I suggest we just go for it, otherwise only Chinese slicers will have it. And the goons who own the patent. Maybe. Long ago, a company I was at had a proprietary images processing algorithm that we were using for lenticular graphics, and had a whole software suite for interlacing the frames, and it was some bullshit about taking out lines instead of adding them – worst patent nonsense ever and very typical, but it turns out that the entire thing was way easy to implement as a Photoshop script. Brass was horrified that we weren’t using the patented tool we developed, but turns out, it all ended up looking exactly the same, and nobody could tell the difference, because? It was a garbage, indefensible 5$+ing patent. Somebody once said that the US patent system is broken.
All patent systems are broken. No one should be granted an artificial monopoly over any object. Being an “idea guy” shouldn’t constitute a paycheck. Inventors should have to sell their inventions and compete with everyone else.
Patent law was created precisely because without it inventors CAN’T sell their inventions and compete with everyone else, since the first publication would let all their competitors match them. Which means inventors kept all their new ideas and innovations as trade secrets and we couldn’t benefit from them.
With patents, the inventor has a reason to tell us all how their new idea works so we can all gain from the invention.
The current patent system is broken but don’t confuse that with patents being a bad idea. Saying “nobody would be granted an artificial monopoly over and object” is the same as saying “authors and artists should work for free and inventors should only profit from innovative they manage to keep secret so almost nobody uses them”.
Yes, yes, yes! Patents have a very good reason to exist. The whole point is that you need an ecosystem where R&D can be self funding. Yes, that system can and is gamed by bad actors, but the answer is to fix the rules not throw out board.
Meh. They had a good reason to exist, but in this age of post-scarcity but with artificial scarcity because greed, I’d rather have an open source inspired patent mechanism. Something like you take your idea, you patent/GitHub it with some license (mention author to use?) and then those who like it can send you a coffee. Would probably send those with a good idea a decent chunk of cash, and would 100% weed out the BS “patents” that only serve as a ground for suing others.
That’s not how prior art works. If they patented brick laying then you’d have a point. And stop pretending this technique is so obvious, if it was then it’d have been in ever slicer for decades now.
Prior art does not mean previously patented. It means all public knowledge, which is why you can’t publicize your invention before you have applied for the patent at the patent office.
And yes, this is trivial like say, putting a bigger bolt on a bridge to make it stronger or a snaking brick wall, which is stronger than 2 layer brick wall and takes less bricks. Those can’t be patented.
The obviousness defence is always weak. As soon as any field is slightly mature, you can quite reasonably say: “If it was obvious why wasn’t it used?” or “Of course the defendent would say it is obvious…”
Commonly “obvious” techniques have either obvious problems without obvious solutions or non-obvious problems, and the patents strength is that it addresses these – not the headline obvious technique.
What is the expected strength increase?
Three kilocomments.
I’ve got a nice idea for a new patent:
First print the inside and outside walls, maybe even two or three layers high, and then fill in the whole void on the third pass. The Idea is that this last pass is hot enough (or adds enough material for increased thermal mass) that it adheres to all
I had that same thought a while ago. I already patented it and you’ll be hearing from my imaginary lawyers!
But seriously, I did also have the same train of thought as you. Maybe even “binding channels” where you’re using the extruder as an injector .. not sure how much pressure it’d be able to put in.
If you’ve ever seen a blob before, you know just how hard and strong plastic can get when you add additional pressure to go with the heat. I had one flow up through my cooling duct, thing was solid.
I believe someone showed that the current patent was incorrectly filed and did not mention an exact same technique published ages before… This should invalidate the patent. That said, the US being what it is it seems prohibitively expensive to go and fight legally to make it right..
So it’s all in limbo
Patent laws, along with all IP laws should be abolished.
Hi. It didn’t work for me. I can’ see any difference with the normal slicing on my Prusaslicer for the top and the bottom layers. I have even added many perimeters (9) to make it visible and it doesn’t help. Maybe I do have problem in setting the post-processing-scripts. Here is my setting: “C:\Users\moham\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python313\python.exe” “C:\Users\moham\Desktop\Bricklayers-main\bricklayers.py” -layerheight 0.2 -extrusionMultiplier 1.5
Does not even need to be a script. In simplify I can set this up as a few different processes. To me this like taking my hand saw and offsetting the teeth on the blade so it cuts differently. It really is an invalid patent at this point of 3D printing history.
Nineteen…FIFTY_NINE. 1959.