3D-printning and more

by Lars Wingård (Production Engineering, KTH)

Thursday 1 Dec 2011, 10:00 → 11:00 Europe/Stockholm

FA32

Additive Manufacturing is the latest* term used to describe a number of manufacturing techniques that have two principles in common: 1. Objects are manufactured by successive addition of material in thin layers and 2. The manufacturing process requires input from a CAD solid model. The first additive manufacturing technique, stereolithography, was developed in the mid 1980's and commercialized in 1986 with the first SLA (StereoLithography Apparatus) machine from 3D Systems. During the following years a number of competing techniques based on the same principles, but utilizing other materials and manufacturing methods, have evolved. In this seminar, I will present an overview of a number of different additive manufacturing techniques, discuss their benefits and drawbacks, talk about their use in different fields of application and show a number of sample parts produced with different additive manufacturing techniques. For those who wish, we can take a short walk after the presentation and discussion, to have a look at our department's new Fortus mc400 machine, which is using the Fused Deposition Modeling technique to produce parts in a variety of different plastic materials and at the other manufacturing equipment available at the department of Production Engineering.

*The term Additive Manufacturing has had many predecessors, such as Rapid Prototyping, (Solid) Free Form Fabrication, 3D Printing, ...