Anti-aliasing for fused filament deposition

Our key idea is to perform a local anti-aliasing, working at a sub-layer accuracy to produce slightly curved deposition paths and reduce approximation errors. This is inspired by Computer Graphics anti-aliasing techniques which consider sub-pixel precision to treat aliasing effects. We show that the necessary deviation in height compared to standard slicing is bounded by half the layer thickness. Therefore, the height changes remain small and plastic deposition remains reliable. We further split and order paths to minimize defects due to the extruder nozzle shape, avoiding any change to the existing hardware. We apply and analyze our approach on 3D printed examples, showing that our technique greatly improves surface accuracy and silhouette quality while keeping the print time nearly identical.