(May 22, 2015) Working
with researchers at Zhejiang University in China, Changxi Zheng, assistant
professor of computer science at Columbia Engineering, has developed a
technique that enables hydrographic printing, a widely used industrial method
for transferring color inks on a thin film to the surface of manufactured 3D
objects, to color these surfaces with the most precise alignment ever attained.
Using a new computational method they developed to simulate the printing
process, Zheng and his team have designed a model that predicts color film
distortion during hydrographic immersion, and uses it to generate a colored
film that guarantees exact alignment of the surface textures to the object. The
research will be presented at SIGGRAPH 2015, August 9 to 13, in Los Angeles.
“Attaining precise alignment of the color texture onto the surface
of an object with a complex surface, whether it’s a motorcycle helmet or a
3D-printed gadget, has been almost impossible in hydrographic printing until
now,” says Zheng. “By incorporating—for the first time—a computational model
into the traditional hydrographic printing process, we’ve made it easy for
anyone to physically decorate 3D surfaces with their own customized color
textures.”