Additive manufacturing as integral part of the digital solution process - An industrial short note

Abstract

Within the last years additive manufacturing established itself in the industrial environment as cutting-edge technological possibility to reduce time-to-market and manufacturing costs and to take in account even the chance of reducing resources consumption. The paper figures that the digital development and production process chain also continues by stepping from virtual to physical world by using additive manufacturing means. This means, after all kind of sophisticated simulation based part and product optimisation, there is a time where you need parts to have a hand on, to test and verify them and even produce them in a new way to face actual economical and ecological challenges. The additive manufacturing technology bears also a paradigm shift: from manufacturing-driven design to design-driven manufacturing. Based on a longtime practical in-house experience state-of-the-art applications with already proven practical relevance (among them is the bionic handling assistant awarded with the German Prize for Achievements in Technology and Innovation) highlight this new freedom of design. Subsequent the current state of additive manufacturing as possibility for serial production will be discussed. There shows up both: real usable potentials and existing restrictions, too. The results of different research studies on PA-based specimen and parts manufactured by laser sintering (SLS) regarding mechanical properties, reproducibility, long-term behaviour and cost deployment will be presented. They pinpoint the huge progress of the last years but also further research needs to overcome mentioned obstacles for a continued and broader industrial application.