Shape Complexity and Process Energy Consumption in Electron Beam Melting: A Case of Something for Nothing in Additive Manufacturing?

By Martin Baumers, Christopher John Tuck, Ricky Wildman, Ian Ashcroft, Richard J. M. Hague. 2017

133 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Additive manufacturing (AM) technology is capable of building up component geometry in a layer‐by‐layer process, entirely without tools, molds, or dies. One advantage of the approach is that it is capable of efficiently creating complex product geometry. Using experimental data collected during the manufacture of a titanium test part on a variant of AM technology, electron beam melting (EBM), this research studies the effect of a variation in product shape complexity on process energy consumption. This is done by applying a computationally quantifiable convexity‐based characteristic associated with shape complexity to the test part and correlating this quantity with per‐layer process energy consumption on the EBM system. Only a weak correlation is found between the complexity metric and energy consumption (ρ = .35), suggesting that process energy consumption is indeed not driven by shape complexity. This result is discussed in the context of the energy consumption of computer‐controlled machining technology, which forms an important substitute to EBM. This article further discusses the impact of available additional shape complexity at the manufacturing process level on the incentives toward minimization of energy inputs, additional benefits arising later within the product's life cycle, and its implications for value creation possibilities.

Subfields: Automotive Engineering, Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering, Mechanical Engineering

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/9d96519edc53361fa5a20a686f5a1fee32a4853f

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Automotive Engineering

1. L. Parry
2. Ian Ashcroft
3. Ricky Wildman
4. Christopher John Tuck
5. N. Aboulkhair

In Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

1. L. Parry
2. Ian Ashcroft

In Mechanical Engineering

1. L. Parry
2. Ian Ashcroft
3. Ricky Wildman
4. Christopher John Tuck
5. N. Aboulkhair
6. I. Maskery
7. Richard J. M. Hague

Citations in the corpus

• 3D printing of Aluminium alloys: Additive Manufacturing of Aluminium alloys using selective laser melting (2019, unknown): “that is broadly insensitive to cost [5].”
• Understanding the effect of laser scan strategy on residual stress in selective laser melting through thermo-mechanical simulation (2016, background): “through enabling designers to realise geometrically complex metallic structures [1], with a rapid”
• Additive manufacturing of Ti6Al4V alloy: A review (2019, unknown): “It includes various near-net shaping processes that are capable of building complex 3D geometries directly from raw materials, which require little follow-on post-processing [53].”