The importance of support optimization for additive manufacturing process

Abstract

The paper describes why support optimization is a very important step in additive manufacturing process. Additive manufacturing process gains an important place in medical industry due to the ability to obtain complex geometries, lattice structures impossible to be achieved using conventional technologies. Our paper focus on the support structures in the additive manufacturing process, required to ensure the quality of the final built part. The support structures solve many problems such as: channeling the heat flux produced by the laser beam, and thus improving the cooling down of the structure during the fabrication process, they avoid detachment of parts from the baseplate during the job due to uneven contraction, and transfer the heat to it, but also introduces new challenges such as: how to remove of support structures, the optimization. The requirement of manually removing the support from the part constrains the geometric freedom of the part as there needs to be hand/tool access. Support structures typically result in wasted feedstock material as they are not reusable and have to be discarded after removal if not recyclable. Thus the aim of this paper is to provide information on the importance of the support structures in the quality of the final parts.