Optimization of Build Time and Support Material Quantity for the Additive Manufacturing of Non-Assembly Mechanisms

In the context of modern industrial manufacturing, Additive Manufacturing processes are gaining more and more importance. Thus, the required quantity of material as well as the production time, which is mainly influenced by the build time required for the layerwise manufacturing process, are decisive for a successful industrial application. At component level, various approaches for minimizing the build time and the quantity of material are discussed in literature and are yet implemented in commercial software tools for preprocessing, the so-called slicing software. However, there is a lack of suitable methods for expediting the manufacturing process of non-assembly mechanisms. Although the positions and orientations of the individual, mutually movable linkages of a mechanism, which are defined in the CAD model, have a significant influence on the resulting build time and quantity of support material, the optimization potential has remained untapped so far. Motivated by this shortcoming, the paper introduces a method for achieving minimum build time and support material quantity using a meta-heuristic optimization technique. By integrating a suitable slicing software in the optimization process, the analysis of build time and support material quantity is based on the machine code, which is adapted to the applied machine and its various settings of the process parameters. The novelty of the contribution can be found in the optimization of build time and support material quantity for the additive manufacturing of non-assembly mechanisms by determining an optimal positioning of the individual movable links for the manufacturing process. A parallel 3RRR mechanism serves as a case study to show the benefits and the applicablity of the proposed method. (C) 2019 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.