Metal Additive Manufacturing Conference - MAMC 2022

To increase the relevance of LPBF in industrial manufacturing, it is necessary to increase the productivity of the process. This can be achieved on existing machine systems without changing the hardware by locally adapting the energy input in the LPBF process by using qualitative (and slow) parameters only in areas where the geometry or the application also requires it - while manufacturing with more productive parameter sets otherwise. The energy input can be adaptively adjusted locally by prior simulation and flexible machine control. Another approach can be to modify the laser-optical system in LPBF machines to shape the laser beam and thus couple the energy into the powder material. This allows the use of greater laser power and therefore more productive process parameters. This can enable the use of higher laser power and hence greater scanning speeds. Simulation at Fraunhofer ILT is used for a better understanding of the interactions between laser radiation and powder in the process zone and to determine suitable parameters.