Development of a methodology for hybrid products during the additive manufacturing process

Abstract

The development of new products, by Additive Manufacturing technologies, is an alternative in the present industry, since AM offers the possibility to fabricate products in just one process. In the AM technology, the parts are created, layer by layer, from a 3D CAD data, however, the products can have important requirements that imply an external part, for example, a metallic element, an optical fibre or thin sensors, that cannot be produced in the same technology or by an AM process and for that it needs to be embedded in the product. This paper presents the ongoing studies around the placement of inserts during the building process on AM technology, with the focus on the methodology and the parameters for production. In this paper, a set of parts were designed, produced and tested (the insert proposal). The preliminary studies include different tolerances experiments, with the focus of identifying the geometric requirement for an insert and the investigation to understand the method to fabricate products with multiple inserts, by embedding products that already have an insert. The information resulting from the preliminary studies was applied in the development and production of a final product, demonstrating that it is possible to develop new products (hybrid products), made by AM, with functional inserts in one fabrication process.