Part Buyers Authority Issue #5

6 PART BUYERS A U T H R I T Y INDUSTRY EXAMPLES THAT HAVE ADOPTED THE METAL AM PROCESS Aerospace Market • Turbine Blades, Air Foils and Stators • Fuel Nozzles & Manifolds • Aluminum Heat Sinks & Brackets Medical Market • Filtration Systems & Vacuum Sealing Tooling • Stainless & Titanium Surgical Instruments • Stainless and Titanium Wire Jigs, Tooling and Fixtures • Titanium Implants that have controlled porosity for bone attachment Heavy Duty Diesel • Fuel System Components • Brackets, Manifolds and Fittings to prove out investment casting designs • Test Stand Hardware Automotive Market • Thin Wall Sheet Metal Prototypes • Conformal Cooled High Pressure Die Cast Inserts • Conformal Cooled Injection Molding Tools • Prototype Gear Blanks and other hardware Oil & Gas • Deep Well Drilling Tools and combining multi-pieces into one complex assembly. DESIGN FOR ADDITIVE MANUFACTURING Traditional difficult part geometries can easily be made with the DMLS process. The question is whether it makes financial sense to produce it this way, as it does not make sense to print a part then grind and machine the entire part as post processing. In this scenario it usually makes more sense to machine the part from a solid billet. If speed is what you are looking for then the numbers may work. We like to get involved in the early stages to work with the designer to make geometry modifications for manufacturability. By adding chamfers and gussets to certain areas we can eliminate the need for support structure. The part price in DMLS is driven by build time and part volume.