Browsing by Subject "support removal"
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Item A Method for Metal AM Support Structure Design to Facilitate Removal(University of Texas at Austin, 2017) Chen, Niechen; Frank, Matthew C.For powder bed metal additive manufacturing (AM), additional post-processing for support structure removal is required. However, this removal process is not formally considered during the design of support structures. Therefore, when either manual or CNC milling is required, some support structures may not be easily removed due to tool accessibility. In this research, with STL model as input, tool accessibility is calculated and used to map onto the facets to grow supports that are more amenable to machined removal. It provides a way to combine previous analysis on support layout with additional information to guide suitable setups; ones that consider not only critical angles requiring support but also removability. This work could enable better support designs that will lead to higher throughput of metal AM by reducing effort and expense in post-process machining.Item Wet-Chemical Support Removal for Additive Manufactured Metal Parts(University of Texas at Austin, 2019) Schmithüsen, T.; Scleifenbaum, Johannes HenrichThe additive manufacturing technology laser powder bed fusion (LPBF) offers great flexibility regarding the manufacturing of complex component structures. Due to the process, support structures have to be manufactured for overhanging component surfaces in order to guarantee dimensional accuracy and reduce distortion. However, these must be removed after manufacturing. Especially for internally supported component surfaces, removal is only possible by means of tool-free technologies. A promising approach for a tool-free support removal is the wet-chemical ablation, in which the support structures are removed by chemical dissolution. So far, the approach has been tested for a few materials (e.g. stainless steel). In order to extend the use of this automatable approach to further AM materials, the influence of different etching agents on different additive aluminium alloys with regard to material ablation and surface influence will be investigated. Finally, the applicability of the results to a supported component will be tested.