레이저 소결 방식 3D 프린팅 시스템에서의 최적 치수 보정 프로세스 연구

Abstract

Recently, 3D printing (3DP) is spotlighted as an innovative production method having potentials to change the manufacturing businesses in various industries. Also, in automotive industry, companies widely recognize the 3D printing technology as a promising manicuring method, so that they utilize 3D printers in their design, development, research and production processes. In automotive industries, however, the application of 3D printing technology is still quite limited to design processes due to the low cost-effectiveness and the lack of engineering reliability. Especially, the selective laser sintering (SLS) 3D printers, known as offering high engineering quality and durability of products, are popularly used in auto part development processes, the dimensional displacements of the 3D printed parts, however, hinder automakers from utilizing the technology directly to enhance their development process. The SLS 3D printers normally produce curved shapes due to thermal deformation (thermal expansion and thermal contraction) caused in the powder sintering process, which accompanies two-phase deformations. In this research, we aim to investigate and analyze the deformation tendencies of SLS 3D printed samples by sizes, shapes, locations in the platform (on 3D Systems’ sPro60 SD). At the end of the paper, we propose an algorithm to predict the deformation and calibrate pointbased 3D cad STL files of samples to mitigate the dimensional deformation with simple shaped samples for the illustrative purposes.