Rapid prototyping of numerically optimised parts

Reducing the time for the development of new products is a key goal in the manufacturing industry. Today Finite Element Analysis (FEM) is used in a wide range of applications to optimise designed parts in regards to the actual stresses which occur during the life cycle of the product. Calculations are supporting the designer to reduce the material needed for the structure of the component. The Fraunhofer-Institute for Applied Materials Research has developed an interface which allows to write FEM-optimised structures directly to the STL format - which can be accepted from all Rapid Prototyping processes. This combination is very useful because calculations could be verified very fast. Due to the approximation with slices complex structures are easy to manufacture. In this paper the entire process chain is explained and examples are given