Additive Manufacturing for High Value Metal Production in an Optimized Hybrid Manufacturing Cell

Abstract

The in-between processes have also been investigated. In the hybrid cell, the surface roughing is done by a surface milling operation in the milling machine, contrary to the traditional sand blasting operation. And, there is no need to use a lot of time on setting up the part, since the part is fastened to a pallet, where the location data is transferred through the local network. Cleaning the part is done by gas pressure, since there is no cutting fluids used in the machining operation. However, if electrical discharge machining where to enter the system a better way of drying off the water from the part should be applied, e.g. hot air. All in all this theses has lead to a working prototype of a hybrid production cell that is fully operable and has been used to produce several interesting industrial cases, one of them explained in this document. The present system is suitable for integration with larger systems, although it still has some manual operation steps. These steps should be possible to automate, but since the software on the additive machine is closed for any outside communication, a back door has been found to affect the location of the parts. However, with some more cooperation with the machine manufacturer it should be possible to develop a better solution to this communication problem. Also, it is unclear how an automated powder handling system should be configured. Apart from these two points the hybrid cell is automated, leaving the precision of setups to the milling machine probing capability, and generating the probing and setup files through a user friendly interface