Additive manufacturing pilot machines
Additive manufacturing is an essential technology to tackle specific production challenges. 3D printing allows to create complex products on demand, in a one-piece flow. However, productivity and quality limitations remain an important technological barrier for market-wide integration. We have disposal of open and modular additive manufacturing platforms for research into the 3D production process both in terms of quality and in terms of speed. We are equipped with additive manufacturing pilot machines for:
- selective laser melting of metals;
- selective laser sintering of polymers;
- (in)direct sintering of ceramics.
Location: Flanders Make - Leuven | FlandersMake@.KULeuven
Key characteristics
The key characteristics of this infrastructure are:
- Open control system: in view of providing access to the machine control software and integrating modules to speed up the research efforts.
- Extensive monitoring capabilities: to test new types of sensors, cameras and monitoring systems and to support innovative data and quality analysis techniques both at the lowest level metal melting step as well as on the highest level of overall system performance.
- Access to critical components and subsystems: in view of testing new mechatronic modules (sensing, control, actuation) in a relevant AM printer.
- Baseplate heating up to 500°C for specific AM machines.
Technical specifications
- The metal 3D printer platform is based on an industrial selective laser melting printer with a build volume of 275x275x400mm.
- An open industrial AM control platform takes over the actuation of the build platform, laser and optical components.
- Different in-house developped, modified or commercially available metal/polymer/ceramic 3D printer platforms:
- 3DSystems ProX320 DMP
- 3DSystems ProX200 DMP
- Concept Laser Mlab SLM
- Concept Laser M1 SLM
- Refurbished EOSint M250
- DTM Sinterstation SLS
- In-house developed SLM machine
What do we offer?
We offer an open and modular platform that enables to improve layer-based AM production systems for the selective laser melting of metals. This infrastructure provides companies access to and control of the different aspects of the AM process. As such, we help companies to improve the build process and turn it into an industrially controlled process.
This includes:
- Broadening the materials palette for AM (ceramics, special alloys of Cu, Ni or W, biomaterials, ...)
- Relating process conditions to static and dynamic mechanical properties via the analysis of microstructures, textures, porosity, thermal stresses, ...
- Machine design and process optimisation (both software and hardware)
- Quality control (X-ray CT, process monitoring, post-build treatments)