3D Multi-Material-Selective-Laser-Melting: technology, fabrication and prototypes

Abstract

[Excerpt] Contrarily to nature, human traditional strategies and inventions both from process and products point of view, use brute force, heavy and inefficient, single and inanimate material (like brick, steel and glass) solutions with unoptimized architectures [1] . To create and developed superior engineering solutions, advanced manufacturing technologies are necessary to evolve from mono-material to multi-material components, from mono-scale to multi-scale added parts, from limited geometries to almost any geometry. Recent man-made use additive technologies and in particular powder-based technologies which possess some principles, similar to nature, where the component is grown, step by step, sequentially. A suitable and high-advanced manufacturing and engineering strategy is necessary for combining dissimilar materials in the same part and thus, combine different and advantageous properties not possible to obtain using single material’s solutions. [...]