Additive manufacturing and traditional processing

Additive manufacturing (AM) technology is a type of technology based on a brand-new manufacturing concept that uses gradually increasing materials to manufacture solid parts. There are also other titles, such as rapid prototyping manufacturing (rapid prototyping manufacturing, RPM), three-dimensional printing (stereoscopic printing, 3D printing) (stereoscopic printing, 3D-printing), solid free-form fabrication (solid free-form fabrication) Wait.

Compared with the traditional manufacturing method (removed material manufacturing method), the additive manufacturing method is to add material manufacturing method. It includes a class of parts manufacturing methods with different process principles. The common principle of the additive manufacturing technology process principle is based on the discrete-stacking principle. The three-dimensional solid model (virtual part) is layered on the computer (transformed into a superposition of many planar «slice» models) to obtain technical information for each layer And through the computer control of specific molding equipment, using various molding techniques to manufacture parts layer by layer, and finally produce three-dimensional three-dimensional parts.
The characteristics of additive manufacturing technology are as follows:

(1) Additive processing method Rapid prototyping manufacturing technology is an additive processing method, which is very different from other processing methods. Other processing methods are mostly based on the material removal processing method.

(2) No model or mold is needed. Rapid prototyping technology manufactures parts based on the method of material superposition. Parts with complex shapes and structures, mold cavities, etc., such as impellers, shells, medical bones and teeth, can be manufactured without using molds.

(3) High technical complexity Rapid prototyping manufacturing technology is a major breakthrough in the field of mechanical processing technology. Rapid prototyping manufacturing technology is a comprehensive embodiment of computer graphics technology, data acquisition and processing technology, material technology, and electromechanical processing and control technology. Therefore, rapid prototyping manufacturing technology is an extremely high-tech manufacturing technology.

(4) Fast manufacturing Compared with traditional processing technology, rapid prototyping technology can greatly shorten the manufacturing time of samples, and rapid prototyping technology can play a great role in the development of new products. Generally, it takes only a few hours or dozens of hours from the three-dimensional modeling of a computer to the manufacture of solid parts, which is difficult to achieve with traditional manufacturing methods.

(5) Remote manufacturing can be realized Through the computer network, rapid prototyping manufacturing technology can produce physical parts in different places.

(6) High material utilization rate Various processing methods of rapid prototyping technology produce less scrap and other waste.

Due to the above characteristics of rapid prototyping manufacturing technology, it has been rapidly developed in industrial applications such as new product design and development.

Over the past two decades, AM technology has achieved rapid development. At present, the relatively mature additive manufacturing technologies mainly include photosensitive resin rapid prototyping, fused deposition rapid prototyping, sheet layered superimposed molding, and selective laser sintering.