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GlitchFinder: Pre-print checking for 3D Printing

Series: Department Seminar

Speaker: Prof. Sreepathi Pai, University of Rochester, USA

Date/Time: Jul 03 11:00:00

Location: CSA Auditorium, (Room No. 104, Ground Floor)

Abstract:
Fused deposition modeling (FDM) printers extrude a plastic filament to construct a 3D object. To orchestrate their movements and the deposition of plastic, they run programs written in G-code. Similar to how compilers translate source code to binaries, the 3D printing toolchain consists of CAD programs that turn geometric representations of objects into triangular meshes which in turn are "compiled" by Slicers to G-code. Bugs abound: unprintable designs, incorrect meshes, and buggy G-code generation to name a few. Often, a time and material-consuming failed print is the only indication something went wrong.

We present GlitchFinder, a differential testing tool built for G-code. By assigning G-code a geometric semantics, and building a novel point-cloud based difference algorithm, it can compare G-code files to reveal differences that are indicative of bugs before printing. We evaluate buggy models, faulty meshes, mesh repair tools, and slicers with GlitchFinder and show that it identifies all known bugs, finds bugs in mesh repair tools, and reveals a new class of bugs that previous tools were unable to detect.

This work appeared in OOPSLA 2025. Joint work with Yumeng He (University of Utah), and Chandrakana Nandi (Certora Inc.)

Speaker Bio:
Sreepathi Pai is an Associate Professor of Computer Science at the University of Rochester. His interests lie in compilers, performance modeling in computer architecture, and the implementation of programming languages for parallel computing. He has built three 3D printers, all from the Voron family. He obtained his PhD from the Indian Institute of Science. His work has been recognized with multiple best paper awards, the latest at NASA Formal Methods 2025 for the semantics of GPU tensor cores.

Host Faculty: R Govindarajan