Additive manufacturing growing fast towards industrial series production

Related Vendors

What requirements does series production place on industry?

The problems that the existing stand-alone machine solutions present for series production are being overcome at Concept Laser with a new machine architecture. To this end, an initial separation of production and handling processes is taking place by the creation of two physically separate areas. In addition, automated powder management and the automation of other processes which have previously been manual enables the downtimes of the past to be reduced to a minimum.

The new machine architecture is characterised essentially by decoupling “pre-production”, “production” and “post-production”. The objective here is to coordinate the process components in a more targeted way with interfaces and to increase the flexibility of the process design to create an integrated approach. This becomes possible thanks to a consistent modular structure of handling stations and build and process units which, in terms of combination and interlinking, promises considerably greater flexibility and availabilities.

In addition, the laser power per square meter of space used is increased seven-fold. Dr Florian Bechmann, Head of R&D at Concept Laser: “The build rates have increased enormously thanks to the multilaser technology. The build envelope sizes have also experienced considerable growth. We now want to use an integrated machine concept to highlight the possible ways that the approaches of Industry 4.0 can change additive manufacturing as the manufacturing strategy of the future. There is potential here to increase industrial added value and enhance suitability for series production.”

Working with modular handling and process stations

The new handling station has an integrated sieving station and powder management. Unpacking, preparations for the next build job and sieving take place in a self-contained system without the operator coming into contact with the powder.

The process station has a build envelope measuring 400 x 400 x >400 mm³. Laser sources, process gas management and filter technology are integrated in the module; the layer thicknesses are in the usual range.

Conventionally, the material store, the processing unit and the collecting unit for the excess material have been firmly connected together. The result of this is that, for example, if new powder is supplied, the build process has to be interrupted, which in turn leads to downtime.

The new approach now envisages these three sections being separated into individual modules, independent of one another and individually controlled. The modules are moved via a tunnel system inside the process or handling station. This means for example that, when new powder is supplied, the empty powder storage module can automatically be replaced by a new module immediately without the build process necessarily needing to be interrupted. Finished build jobs can now also be moved out of the machine with the dedicated module and replaced directly with a new prepared build module so that production operations can be resumed again immediately.

In order to control and monitor machine components and the flow of data, a software architecture has been designed by Concept Laser which combines MDL (machine data logging) with ODA (operating data acquisition) and at the same time organises the flow of data in the complete digital process chain.

The integrated tool is intended to offer additive manufacturing workers clear process monitoring, active process design and automation right through to part documentation in one fell swoop. At the same time, CL WRX 3.0 offers interfaces for incoming CLS data, automation tasks and links to the company's ERP systems.

continued on the next page

(ID:44341928)