A lightweight and support-free design method for selective laser melting

Abstract

Topology optimisation is an effective approach to design extreme lightweight components. However, most of the resulted optimum lightweight components usually have complex structures which cannot be produced successfully by traditional manufacturing processes. Selective laser melting is one of the additive manufacturing processes. It shows powerful capacity in the manufacturing of metal components with complex structures. Therefore, the combination of topology optimisation and selective laser melting shows a promising prospect for metal components. However, support structures were usually introduced during the selective laser melting manufacturing process, which resulted to some disadvantages, for example, the support structures are generally difficult to remove from the original components because it is difficult to clamping and machining. Therefore, a design method was proposed in this study, named lightweight and support-free design method, the detailed design process and advantages were presented. In the design process, topology optimisation was applied to realise lightweight design, and support-free design process was developed to meet the support-free requirement. Finally, as a case, a cross-beam component was designed using the proposed method, and the final model was produced successfully using selective laser melting process. The case study result verified that the proposed design method is effective to design lightweight and support-free industrial metal components for SLM process.

Numerical study on load-bearing capabilities of beam-like lattice structures with three different unit cells

“…Lightweight design is one area that AM achieves well where it is impractical for other conventional fabrication technologies [1][2][3]. Currently there are two main methods of lightweight design, including cellular structure with unit cell [4][5][6] and topology optimization with advanced algorithm [2,3,7].…”

Monolithic 3D labs- and organs-on-chips obtained by lithography-based ceramic manufacture

“…More complex geometries, intricate networks of channels, additional layers and cantilever membranes, among other features and details, can be obtained following similar computer-aided design procedures, incorporating ad hoc support structures, leaving enough space for resin or slurry evacuation and applying lithography-based ceramic manufacture, either to ceramic and bioceramic slurries and to polymers and biopolymers, which constitutes and additional very unique feature of the technology used in this study. The presented process is aligned with current groundbreaking trends linked to light-weight design and to the minimization of support structures in additive manufacturing [28].…”

Manufacturability of Overhanging Holes Using Electron Beam Melting

“…One of the most effective ways of lessening the use of the support and its associated cost is the optimum orientation of the part on the building platform [10,11,26]. The application of topology optimization can also be utilized to create a lightweight design that meets the support-free requirement [27,28]. Additionally, many research studies which have developed design rules for self-supporting overhangs can be found in the literature [10,15,17,[29][30][31][32].…”