Partial Additive Manufacturing: Experiments and Prospects with Regard to Large Series Production

Wire and Arc Additive Manufacturing of Aluminum Components

“…Currently, an individual casting mold is made for each component. In order to reduce investment costs, it is proposed to combine additive manufacturing with high-volume production processes [14]. This involves small adaptions to modify kinematic points or higher loads as well as partial additive manufacturing, which adds on basic workpieces made from a large-volume production.…”

A Comparison of FDM Structural Layouts and Implementation of an Open-Source Arm-Based System

“…No data could be found for the accuracy of the delta printer, but uses gearing similar to the XY stage of the gantry printer. The Stewart Platform system used by Song et al [7] had a stated accuracy of <500 μm, and Dröder et al [8] note the accuracy of their implemented Stewart Platform printer remained slightly lower than a comparable 3D printer; this may be partially due to the difficulties in implementing inverse kinematics for the high DOF parallel system. In contrast, the robot arm has significantly better positioning capabilities, due to its development for industrial applications.…”

“…While the Delta robot is capable of rapid movement in the Z direction required for printing curved layers, the inability to position the nozzle normal to the substrate constrains the maximum printed gradient to be dependent on the nozzle geometry. The Stewart Platforms proposed in [7,8] allow for repositioning, but exhibit a strong positional and orientation coupling.…”

“…"Additive Finalisation" would be a second use case, presented by Dröder et al [8], where the base component could be placed on a conveyor belt adjacent to the robot arm, allowing the arm to locate and print on the surface. A major consideration for its industrial use would be the value added, as a robotic arm would represent a significantly higher investment than a commercial printer, and as such its corresponding capabilities must be higher.…”

“…They demonstrated the capability to laser scan a surface, generate a toolpath to maintain an angle normal to the surface, and deposit material on a curved surface. A similar concept was trialled by Dröder et al [8] demonstrating "Additive Finalisation", a concept where a massproduced base component has final geometric features added using FDM -with use of a Stewart Platform, they were able to add features onto existing surfaces. A similar project equipped an opensource 3D printer with two additional degrees of freedom, and a laser scanner [9], allowing the identification of a surface, and superimposition of a CAD object to generate a conforming toolpath for deposition onto the scanned surface, and final build -it was noted there is a significantly higher complexity for slicing curved layers over the traditional planar layers due to the possibility of collision with the previously deposited structure.…”