David Conover, chief technologist for mechanical products at ANSYS Inc., compares a bracket on his left made with additive manufacturing that is lighter and smaller than an identical bracket made by traditional manufacturing – Courtesy Observer Report
On October 1st, there were more than 2,346 events planned to celebrate Manufacturing Day 2015 — a celebration of modern manufacturing meant to inspire the next generation of manufacturers. Pittsburgh-based Catalyst Connection hosted an event near the ANSYS HQ and a few of our ANSYS team members had the opportunity to attend 2015 Additive Manufacturing for Small Manufacturers. Together with 125 area manufacturers we had the opportunity to listen and learn from a range of experts and industry leaders such as GE Aviation, America Makes, Alcoa, NASA Glenn Research Center, Carnegie Mellon University, and the University of Pittsburgh.
They discussed the latest advancements and real-world applications of additive manufacturing, also known as 3-D printing. My takeaways from the conference are the following:
- Additive manufacturing (AM) has made significant progress
- AM has been adopted broadly, and
- Pittsburgh is leading the charge.
One of the keynote speakers, Greg Morris — Manager for Additive Technologies at GE Aviation — talked about the investment that GE is making at its Pittsburgh-area additive manufacturing facility in Findlay Township, PA.
Carnegie Mellon University, in its presentation, asserted that Southwest Pennsylvania is positioned to be the leader in Metals Additive Manufacturing (AM) and recognized ANSYS, Inc. as the leading AM software provider. I was hardly surprised, given the long-standing and far-reaching vision of Simulation Driven Product Development (SDPD). AM will undoubtedly accelerate the adoption and usage of simulation in product development processes beyond the traditional verification and validation.
Simulation Driven Product Development: By simulating Complete Virtual Prototypes early in the conceptual design process, engineers can innovate rapidly by exploring multitude of design alternatives
It used to be that simulation was primarily a forensic tool, used late in the product development cycle, for understanding why something didn’t work. Simulation or CAE is conducted after a “human-designed” CAD is available. CAD was developed based on a “subtractive manufacturing” paradigm to support the notion of Design for Manufacturing (Subtractive Manufacturing).
In CAD, a designer begins by extruding a solid block or cylinder and then starts subtracting it away (fillet, hole extrusion, chamfer, etc.) very much like real-world manufacturing approach (milling, drilling, cutting, etc.). In additive manufacturing, successive layers of material are laid down under computer control. These objects can be of almost any shape or geometry, and are produced from a 3-D Model. The key words here are “any shape or geometry”. All the constraints (manufacturability) of subtractive manufacturing (e.g. shape/size complexities, multi-materials, and internal cellular structures) are addressed by additive manufacturing.
Engineers are only constrained by their imagination and creativity, and hence simulation is the key. What if we allow sophisticated mathematical algorithms or techniques such as topology optimization and robust numeric adjoint-solvers to take the design wheel from humans and create a new paradigm: machine designed components. The result is astonishing in the case of the bracket shown below. The machine-designed bracket is approximately 90% lighter than the original human-designed that was forged.
The question that is increasingly being asked in meetings with investors I attend is: Will additive manufacturing that enables rapid prototyping reduce simulation usages? Quite the contrary. Additive manufacturing will only accelerate the realization of SDPD vision. Customers are continuously exploring ways of innovating faster and the value derived from the synergy between simulation and additive manufacturing is obvious here at ANSYS. Happy Belated Manufacturing Day!
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