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As an alternative to powder-bed based processes, metal parts can be additively manufactured by extrusion based additive manufacturing. In this process, a highly filled polymer filament is deposited and subsequently debindered and sintered. Choosing a proper orientation of the part that satisfies the requirements of the debinding and sintering processes is crucial for a successful manufacturing process. To determine the optimal orientation for debinding, first, the part must be scaled in order to compensate the sinter induced shrinkage. Then, a finite element analysis is performed to verify that the maximum stresses due to the dead load do not exceed the critical stress limits. To ease this selection process, an approach based on open source software is shown in this article to efficiently determine a part’s optimal orientation during debinding. This automates scaling, debinding simulation, and postprocessing for all six main directions. The presented automated simulation framework is examined on three application examples and provides plausible results in a technical context for all example parts, leading to more robust part designs and a reduction of experimental trial and error. Therefore, the presented framework is a useful tool in the product development process for metal extrusion additive manufacturing applications.

A new approach for the analysis of high pressure die casting geometries concerning form filling is introduced. It enables the reduction of simulation cycles needed in the product development process, as they are highly time and cost intensive. Therefore, we developed an analysis tool, which uses shortest paths from each part of the geometry to the chosen ingate surfaces. This way, and by evaluating the information given by basic filling simulations, we can evaluate the usability of a given geometry for a high pressure die casting process and are able to suggest useful strategies to place ingates and to design a filling system.

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