3D Shrinkage Estimation for Printed Ceramics

Dimensional deviations caused by anisotropic shrinkage during thermal post-processing remain a critical barrier in ceramic additive manufacturing. Existing compensation methods often rely on manual, iterative adjustments, limiting efficiency and scalability. We present an automated framework that estimates per-axis shrinkage from paired 3D scans of parts in the green and sintered states of a printed object. Our acquisition system performs high-resolution 3D reconstructions of ceramic parts immediately after printing (green state) and post-sintering (sinter state), using simultaneous red and blue lasers for single pass scanning. To address the challenge of aligning geometries with differing scales and deformations, we develop a robust registration algorithm tailored for cross-state point clouds. The final per-axis shrinkage estimation is performed by matching histograms of projected coordinates. Experimental evaluations show that the proposed framework achieves shrinkage estimations close to the reference solution, without manual intervention.