What kind of conjectures have you had about smart manufacturing, which is gaining momentum today? Just as young 3D printers are looking forward to the emergence of fully automated 3D printing factories. As a digital serial manufacturing model, the production will no longer be just one product, but hundreds or thousands.
When we look back at additive manufacturing, the development trend of additive manufacturing is like TV. From the original black and white, blurry small box, to the emergence of color TV, to the current ultra-thin large-screen digital TV, its development is completely reborn. The feeling of making people unable to freeze this technology in what TV used to be.
Is it possible to realize a fully automatic 3D printing factory? Although it is different from plastic 3D printing and other methods of metal 3D printing, the powder bed laser melting technology has to overcome many obstacles to automate serial production, such as how to automatically clean the unmelted metal powder and how to cut the workpiece from the base table. , How to support the structure, how to carry out the next step of CNC milling, etc. However, three major signs indicate that a fully automated 3D printing factory is possible and realistic.
Powder bed laser melting technology
Metal 3D printing, especially powder bed laser melting 3D printing is still a new thing for most people. With the rapid progress of additive manufacturing technology based on metal powder bed, including build size, build speed, process configuration and quality assurance, etc. . ConceptLaser put forward the concept of “Tomorrow Factory” at the end of 2015. This concept includes three important aspects: digital network system, integration into production environment and automated process.
This indicates that the young 3D printing industry is looking forward to a fully automated factory that produces not just one product, but hundreds or even thousands of digital serial manufacturing modes. In 2016, Airbus will start the serial production of the large-size “bionic” cabin isolation structure-Scalmalloy parts on the A320 aircraft, confirming that the fully automated 3D printing factory is not an imagination, but will soon enter reality.
Modular design concept
ConceptLaser’s flexible machine loading and space separation, installation and disassembly procedures are a major feature of its “Tomorrow Factory” modular concept, a fully automated system, and continuously produced parts. Through external mechanical or manual control system to complete the connection between the processes, the different components of the machine have been reserved for automation interfaces from the time of design.
Another company, Additive Industries System integrates a high degree of automation during its processing, including powder management, parts cleaning, platform removal, storage and other processes, all of which occur inside the machine. Regardless of whether it is broken into parts or highly integrated, these two methods have improved the basis of modularity for additive manufacturing to intelligent production.
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