3D Printing has many powerful benefits for manufacturing that can help meet customer demands faster, reduce cost of manufacturing parts, and quickly support tooling needs to keep production machines online and operational. However, a design software tool is still needed to support getting the right design into the software to generate accurate 3D printed parts.
In this video, Bart Schenck explains the most common applications that support how to design and optimize parts for additive manufacturing:
Lightweighting and topology optimization
Automated production
Flexible manufacturing
Bart then walks viewers through a demonstration of Function-Driven Generative Design, which is a new way to design specifically for Additive Manufacturing. It combines solid modeling, FEA and surface modeling techniques. Bart shares:
Common workflows for designers (not high end FEA)
How to retain all functional characteristics of the product/part
How to optimize topology (Overall shape, volume and mass)
In the first webinar of our Series: Success in Additive Manufacturing we feature Humanetics, the global leader in the design, development and manufacturing of test crash dummies who successfully adopted additive manufacturing in their operations.
Humanetics adopted 3D printing in the early additive manufacturing days when they were looking for alternatives to cost-effectively replace the ribs in crash test dummies using 3D printing technology that could match the strength and durability needed for their test conditions. They discovered new cost savings and production speed using Markforged 3D Industrial Composite printers.
Join us and hear Kris Sullenberger, Sr. Design Engineer, share how the company continues to evolve their additive manufacturing capabilities and applications at their Huron facility.
Adaptive sponsored COExperience 2020 along with hosting a virtual booth at the event in September. Frank Thomas and Florian Bardet had the opportunity to present in the COE session on Reverse Engineering with the 3DEXPERIENCE platform. We also posted a few exclusive videos in our booth that highlighted CATIA 3DEXPERIENCE on the Cloud, NC Programming, and more. Details include:
A recording of the COE Virtual Session by Frank Thomas and Florian Bardet: Optimize Reverse Engineering with 3DEXPERIENCE which highlights how to combine the power of 3D Scanning hardware with the 3DEXPERIENCE platform to support innovation cycles.
Demo: CATIA Engineering on the Cloud – This video highlights the most current features of CATIA Engineering on 3DEXPERIENCE r2021x Cloud
Video: Introduction to CATIA v5 NC Programming – our video shows the range of capabilities of CATIA v5 when automating NC Programming on the shop floor.
The Latest in our 3D Printing Portfolio with our Walk-Through Video of our Additive Manufacturing Lab at the Youngstown Business Incubator facility.
We partnered with Metallum3D to publish one of their technical papers on advanced microwave sintering technologies for sinter-based metal manufacturing.
Metallum3D wanted to take on the challenge to improving conventional sintering processes for metal manufacturing. Conventional sintering processes have slow heating rates, long sintering times, high energy consumption and high equipment costs. Metallum3D’s patent-pending microwave sintering technologies greatly improve the performance and economics of the sintering process by providing fast heating rates (5x to 10x faster), short sintering times (up to 80% reduction), energy efficiency, and lower equipment costs.
Paper: “HOMOGENEOUS HEATING IN MICROWAVE SINTERING WITH NON-RESONANT SLOTTED WAVEGUIDES AND GRANULAR SUSCEPTOR MATERIAL”
This paper analyzes a variety of techniques for manufacturing a three-dimensional part followed by a sintering process.
In one technique, a 3D printer may extrude a feedstock composed of a metal powder and a binder to create a green part without the need for a mold. The green part may then undergo a debinding and sintering processes to produce a solid metal part. In another technique, a 3D printed part is produced by selectively spraying a binder into successive layers of a metal powder material to form a green part. The green part is then subjected to a sintering process to produce a solid metal part.
Current conventional sintering processes for metal additive manufacturing have slow heating rates (~ 5 deg. C/min), long sintering times (> 24 hrs.), high energy consumption and high equipment costs. Metallum3D is developing patent pending microwave sintering technologies that greatly improve the performance and economics of the sintering process including fast heating rates (5x to 10x faster), short sintering times (up to 80% reduction when compared to conventional sintering), lower energy consumption and lower equipment costs. Read the paper to learn more…
In recent years, 3D printers have become streamlined, user-friendly devices useful for anything from prototyping to tooling, and with advancements in materials and production, they can also be valuable resources for production parts. The Metal X features a new kind of metal printing and end-to-end software tracking, making it the simplest way to manufacture metal parts. The full system consists of:
A 3D printer with a fully enclosed build chamber, ultra-quiet motion system, and environmentally controlled material storage.
Eiger, the cloud-based 3D printer management software, built-in touchscreen interface, and automatic material tracking.
A wash station to remove the primary binding material after printing.
A high-performing, high-value sintering furnace to convert parts to pure metal.
Metal Printing Overview
The Metal X produces metal parts via atomic diffusion additive manufacturing, or ADAM, a hybrid of metal injection molding and 3D printing. The process starts with a design exported from a CAD system to Eiger and then printed using a combination of metal powder and a plastic binding agent, which keeps the powder in place as it goes through post-processing. After printing, the part is washed to remove the binder and fired in the sinter furnace to solidify the metal. When the process is complete, you’re left with a metal part that can be processed and treated the same way you’d treat parts produced by other means.
How it Works
MARKFORGED METAL X SYSTEM Wash-1, Metal X, Sinter-2
Preparation. When you bring a CAD file into Eiger (as an STL), the software automatically scales the part up by about 20% to compensate for post-processing shrinkage. With the part open, you can select material, original units, and more or less scaling, as well as view part details such as print time, wash time, material cost, and more. When you’re ready, click the Print button to start the job.
Printing. The Metal X printer prints the part as well as a support structure with a white layer of ceramic between the two to ensure the support structure doesn’t adhere to the part during post-processing. Once the print job is done, remove the green part and the thin, plastic sheet it’s printed on from the printer and remove the part from the print sheet.
Part washing/drying. After the part is printed, it shows in the Wash utility in the Eiger software as “Ready to Wash” with a time to completion. Put the part in the wash—a solvent bath that breaks down the binder holding the metal in place—and the software will send notifications of status while it’s processing. After washing, put the part in the dryer on the other side of the wash station, to allow the last of the solvent to evaporate.
Sintering. The last processing step is firing the part to harden it. Set the part into the sinter furnace on a ceramic plate (a “stage”) and start the furnace, which tells Eiger the part is in process. The software monitors progress in debinding, heating the metal, and cooling the part down. Once it has cooled, remove the part from the furnace and from the stage. Then remove the support structure from the part, as the ceramic layer has now become powder and there’s nothing holding the two pieces together.
Finished part. Once the binder is removed and the part is sintered, you have solid metal, which can receive any additional post-processing it might need, whether heat treatment, milling, powder coating, or the like. It’s ready for use.
Get the parts you need in 24 hours
Be ready to respond to customer demands or create replacement parts for your plant with a variety of materials quickly with the Metal X. Easily print complex geometries, eliminate your tooling spend, saving your organization precious hours and dollars. Materials include: 17-4 PH Stainless steel, H13, A2, D2 Tool Steel grades, Iconel 625, Copper, 316L Stainless Steel, and Titanium Ti6Al4V.
Some business benefits for 3D Metal Printing include:
