Multi-axis fused filament fabrication (FFF) reduces staircase artifacts and support material by adapting nozzle orientation. However, reliable and highly customizable printing requires layers and toolpaths combining a number of challenging properties: following prescribed fields, preserving constant bead geometry, avoiding stops, retractions, and collisions. We present AtomSlicer, which takes a 3D tool-orientation field and perlayer 2-RoSy tangent direction fields, to generate field-aligned non-planar layers of near-constant thickness. It then computes collision-free deposition toolpaths that are continuous within each layer, and as continuous as possible across layers. AtomSlicer encodes geometry with three orthogonal phase fields sampled into oriented atoms, partitions them into fabricable layers, reconstructs layer meshes, and synthesizes 2-RoSy-aligned toolpaths. Unlike prior methods it treats user- or optimizer-defined fields as constraints, producing a feasible toolpath or reporting non-fabricability rather than modifying the specification. We validate on varied shapes, including a large Thingi10k study, and 13 printed models using constant extrusion per unit path length under a fixed bead profile. AtomSlicer reduces non-extruding travel to a few percent, cuts travel moves by one to two orders of magnitude versus planar and Atomizer baselines, and is 9×-60× faster than Atomizer.

Cloaking objects with metamaterials has been extensively studied to hide internal objects across various physical properties, including optical, acoustic, and thermal. We explore a new direction in mechanical cloaking: halftoning an image using a porous structure that behaves like a uniform, linear, isotropic material and visually matches a target image. For an external observer, this creates the surprising effect where the object appears mechanically isotropic and homogeneous while its porous structure resembles a target image. We introduce a parametric class of porous structures suitable for this problem, as demonstrated by numerical experiments. The structures we define offer a wide range of visual contrasts, enabling effective halftoning while maintaining near isotropic effective mechanical properties.

Abstract Fused filament fabrication (FFF) enables users to quickly design and fabricate parts with unprecedented geometric complexity, fine‐tuning both the structural and aesthetic properties of each object. Nevertheless, the full potential of this technology has yet to be realized, as current slicing methods fail to fully exploit the deposition freedom offered by modern 3D printers. In this work, we introduce a novel approach to toolpath generation that moves beyond the traditional layer‐based concept. We use frames, referred to as atoms , as solid elements instead of slices. We optimize the distribution of atoms within the part volume to ensure even spacing and smooth orientation while accurately capturing the part's geometry. Although these atoms collectively represent the complete object, they do not inherently define a fabrication plan. To address this, we compute an extrusion toolpath as an ordered sequence of atoms that, when followed, provides a collision‐free fabrication strategy. This general approach is robust, requires minimal user intervention compared to existing techniques, and integrates many of the best features into a unified framework: precise deposition conforming to non‐planar surfaces, effective filling of narrow features – down to a single path – and the capability to locally print vertical structures before transitioning elsewhere. Additionally, it enables entirely new capabilities, such as anisotropic appearance fabrication on curved surfaces.