The aerospace industry has always been a fertile industry exploring and adopting metal additive manufacturing technology, but the automotive industry has been subject to some restrictions. This is not to say that 3D printing has not been used in automobile production. It is understood that most automobile manufacturers are working on it. Research, although limited by the adoption of many factors, including productivity and cost per piece. Recently, British manufacturer Betatype demonstrated how AM can overcome these limitations in the automotive industry by using Laser Powder Bed Fusion (LPBF) to manufacture 384 qualified metal parts in a single construction. The project uses Betatype optimization technology to significantly reduce part costs ( From $ 40 to $ 4) and shorten lead times (from 444 hours to 34 hours).
High-volume industry
In its case study, Betatype started challenging what is widely believed to be AM technology-as they do now-unable to meet the high volume and low cost needs of certain consumer-oriented industries such as automotive. Instead, it states that the key to adopting AM in high-volume industries is optimizing process economics. In other words: choose the most efficient manufacturing process for each part produced.
By combining this knowledge with its own understanding of AM limitations and its optimization technology, Betatype says it can help customers create parts specifically designed for AM that perform better than traditionally manufactured parts and are economically viable.
Fully stacked
More practically, Betatype demonstrates how to use AM for 3D printing of a series of LED headlights for the automotive industry. As the company explains, the project stems from the automotive industry's recent shift to using LED headlights and its need to adapt to new thermal management challenges.
"Usually, these new components require relatively large heat sinks, which are usually actively cooled," the company wrote. "Betatype recognizes that the specific geometry of these metal parts makes them ideal for LPBF production, which can integrate multiple manufacturing processes into one production method.
In order to make metal headlight parts suitable for AM, Betatype first redesigned parts that were printed using LPBF. During the redesign process, Betatype was able to design parts with built-in support functions, which allowed multiple headlight parts to be stacked on top of each other in the build tray without additional support.
Although "full stacking" is often considered a complicated feat (largely due to thermal stress during the layer process), Betatype ensures that headlight components are designed to reduce thermal stress. Betatype's novel stacking design ultimately enabled the company to "nested" a series of parts together to optimize the printer's build volume. As mentioned above, because of this, a total of 384 parts were printed in one print job. The machine used for this purpose is the EOS M 280 system.
Better, cheaper, faster
In addition to designing parts as stacked models, Betatype uses its expertise to optimize other aspects of the build process. As the company states: "Through specific control parameters, the components in each layer are significantly reduced in a single toolpath where the laser effectively melts the components, with minimal delay between the two. This is in contrast to Betatype's optimized algorithms and process IP Combined, it reduces the build time of each part from 1 hour to less than 5 minutes per part. This is 10 times faster than using a standard build processor. "
On the cost side, Betatype says it has succeeded in reducing the cost per piece from more than $ 40 to less than $ 4-a significant cost savings. It added that using EOS M280 or Renishaw's RenAM500M (Single Laser Medium Frame (SLMF) System), it can reduce production time from 444 hours to approximately 30 hours for the production of 384 headlight components. However, with the new multi-laser system MLMF, it can even reduce build time to 19 hours.
"Using these high-productivity systems, a one-year productivity increase from 7055 parts to 135,168 parts per year is likely to increase 19 times," Betatype said. "By installing 7 machines to run this optimization process, you can approach 1 million parts per year-more powerful and cost-effective parts."