Additive Manufacturing

Digital twins connect physical and digital systems, furthering efficiency, enabling predictive maintenance, and allowing the production of more customized products. Despite these advantages, challenges such as high costs, data synchronization, and security risks hinder widespread adoption. This article explores the potential of digital twins and examines key barriers to integration and implementation, also considering some industrial applications including additive manufacturing as a relevant use case.

In the course of digitalization, collaboration between humans and machines is inevitable. This should be considered as early as possible in further training. There’s a major obstacle to this in mechanical engineering: the lack of access to the knowledge needed for success. This can have a negative impact on the acceptance of digitalized processes. A teaching and learning platform teaching digitalization on real machines does important work here.

Spare parts for older products are often difficult to obtain or cannot be produced in an economically viable way using conventional manufacturing techniques. This article examines whether damping elements for gearbox bearings (in/for the automotive sector) can be manufactured from thermoplastic polyurethanes (TPU) with the same or compatible properties as the original part alternatively using additive manufacturing.

In additive manufacturing – which is also known as 3D printing – plastic waste is produced, for example in the form of required support structures or faulty prints. One option for resource recirculation in additive manufacturing is direct use in a pellet 3D printer that incorporates fused granulate fabrication (FGF). The elimination of the filament production process step reduces the manufacturing time and the energy required for recirculation.

Finger fractures are usually still casted with plaster bandages. However, to avoid acampsia of the finger joints, flexibility exercises are necessary. Further disadvantages of the rigid plaster bandages are insufficient breathability and water resistance, weightiness and the necessity to apply wet and pliable plaster bandages to the injured patient. This article describes how individually designed hand orthoses without these disadvantages are attainable. With scans, modern software like STL editors (STL: Standard Tessellation Language) or CAD systems (CAD: Computer Aided Design) and additive manufacturing, complex, light weight and breathable structures are possible. Contrary to the solely mechanical art of casting with plaster, the new approach requires expertise in data processing and additive manufacturing seldom found in medical facilities. But this opens opportunities for service providers.

The use of industrial robots in additive manufacturing has been increasing in recent years. Particularly due to the voluminous installation space and the great flexibility, they are predestined for the production of large-volume, individualised components. The multi-axis movement options of the print head attached to the end effector in conjunction with a swivel-tilt unit of the build platform mean that support structures can be dispensed with, which represents a major economic advantage.

Additive manufacturing is an increasingly important manufacturing technology with huge economical potential. However, its popularity is accompanied by high material and time losses, as defects are often detected at a very late stage. One solution for a more sustainable production is the automated detection of manufacturing defects using artificial intelligence. This article describes the digitization of the defect detection process in additive manufacturing using a system based on a neural network. In addition to the steps for automated defect detection, system performance is also discussed.