Dimensional Accuracy and Machine Variability of Titanium Parts Manufactured using the EOS Direct Metal Laser Sintered (DMLS) Process

摘要

Additive Manufacturing (AM) of metallic parts has many advantages to traditional manufacturing processes. AM allows for additional design freedom, consolidation of assemblies, complex lightweighting, and shortened supply chain. Consequently, there is a desire to begin using metal AM parts in production applications. In order to accomplish that goal, the AM parts must be qualified, which will often require assessment of the dimensional accuracy. An important aspect of such an assessment includes investigation of dimensional variability from build-to-build within one AM machine and dimensional variability between multiple AM machines. Acceptable dimensional accuracy on one AM machine can be used to qualify the production process while acceptable dimensional accuracy across multiple machines will allow the process to be scaled for larger production volumes.