Design for Metal AM – A Beginner's Guide
Published on : Monday 30-11--0001
Advanced metal additive manufacturing systems are designed and built by Renishaw to fulfil a range of industry applications where durability, customised parts and precision are key. Industries include dental, medical, mould tooling, automotive, industrial tooling, aerospace, and creative.
The introduction to an interesting article: Design for Metal AM – A Beginner's Guide
Additive manufacturing (AM) gives us tremendous freedom to create components with free-form and intricate features, direct from CAD and without the need for expensive tooling. These complex designs would be impractical, if not impossible, to produce conventionally. Additive components are often lighter, more efficient and better adapted to their application.
This flexibility does not, however, give us total freedom to design any shape that we can think of. At least, not if we want to manufacture it at a sensible cost.
Like any manufacturing process, AM technologies have their capabilities and their limitations. For instance, laser powder-bed fusion parts that are designed with overhanging features – i.e., where we are building on top of un-fused powder – may require sacrificial supports to enable them to build successfully. These supports increase build time, consume extra materials and require additional post-processing for their removal.
Design for AM (DfAM) is, therefore, critical if we are to produce parts that combine exceptional performance with practical, cost-effective additive manufacture. The intimate relationship between functional optimisation and design for process in the article Is topological optimisation really optimal? This article considers the key factors that drive the success rate and productivity of AM builds, and explains some of the critical guidelines that designers should follow to create efficient production components.
Since the article is lengthy and contains several illustrations, it is best read in the original link: http://www.renishaw.com/en/design-for-metal-am-a-beginners-guide--42652