Conceptual Development of a High-Productive Fabrication System for Additive Manufactured Large-Scale Items from Arbitrarily Chosen Plastics

The objective of the research project is the development of a production system in order to create additive manufactured large-scale parts based on arbitrarily chosen thermoplastics. A real three-dimensional additive manufacturing process is going to be realized. It becomes possible to create items under consideration of lightweight design aspects and optimization in strength. The key-technology of the prototype is based on fused layer modeling. An offline tool automatically separates the CAD-model into partial volumes and realizes a multi-axis relative movement between extruder and shell-model. The setup utilizes three extruders to provide a huge variety of material applications and support structures. Special plastic blends are being developed and tested in order to generate items with individually desired properties like hard-soft combinations, colors and locally defined conductivities. Furthermore, it is intended to improve the bonding quality between deposited beads by tempering the extruded paths with a laser beam. Surface improvements, outlining, labeling and the functionalizing of part surfaces are objectives of this research. The final setup will be applicable for prototypes and mass production providing a part volume of 800x800x800 [mm³] and maximum weight of 25kg.