Relevance of the topic
Design freedoms and elimination of tools
Additive manufacturing processes, commonly referred to as 3D printing, have evolved in recent years from pure prototyping (“rapid prototyping”) to the production of functional end-use parts (“rapid manufacturing”). While rapid prototyping is primarily aimed at the fast and cost-effective production of models for design and concept validation, additive manufacturing now enables the production of complex, functional components with high requirements in terms of material properties and precision. A key advantage of additive manufacturing processes is the layer-by-layer construction of components, which allows almost any geometry to be realized that would be difficult or impossible to produce using conventional manufacturing processes such as casting, milling, or forging. This opens up new possibilities, especially for high-performance applications, for example in the aerospace and medical technology sectors. In the aviation industry, additive processes are used to manufacture weight-optimized structures that are tailored to the load path, while in medical technology, patient-specific implants and prostheses with complex geometries can be realized. With advances in the field of metal 3D printing (“Metal Additive Manufacturing,” MAM) interest is growing in a wide range of industries, as these technologies enable high component quality, dimensional accuracy, and mechanical resilience. Examples include the manufacture of turbine blades, lightweight structures, and customized medical implants.
The ongoing boom in additive manufacturing (“3D printing”) is leading to steadily growing interest in the production of functional components that are suitable not only for prototypes but also for end use. Particularly noteworthy here is the exceptional design freedom that additive manufacturing processes enable, as well as the increasing mobility of modern 3D printing systems. These characteristics also make the technology attractive for applications in the defense industry and the military, as they allow for the decentralized production of spare parts and functionally critical components directly in the field, even under difficult environmental conditions. At our institute, two processes in particular are being researched intensively: material extrusion (MEX), which is primarily used for processing polymer materials, and selective laser melting of metals (powder bed fusion – laser beam/metal, PBF-LB/M), which enables the production of highly resilient, geometrically complex metal components. These technologies open up new avenues for the production of spare parts and the optimization of existing components, both in industrial and safety-related contexts. A key area of research at our institute is the development and adaptation of development methodologies that are specifically tailored to the potential and requirements of additive manufacturing. This is because exploiting the full potential of additive manufacturing requires a constructive realignment (“Design for Additive Manufacturing,” DfAM), in which components are ideally developed and designed in a fundamentally different way than for conventional manufacturing processes.
