designing with inspire/materialise 3-matic for additive ... · designing with inspire/materialise...

Designing with Inspire/Materialise 3-matic for Additive Manufacturing

Copyright © 2014 solidThinking, Inc. Proprietary and Confidential. All rights reserved.

Original Model

This model was previously designed and possibly optimized for traditional manufacturing techniques (ie. machining).

Material: Ti-6Al-4V

Weight: 6.203 lbs

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Simplify

We now create our design space by filling in all pockets and removing existing fillets. We can also use the Solid Edit tools to separate our design and non design space regions.

Remove filletsRemove holes Push/Pull to fill in gaps

Solid Edit design/non design space regions Note: Attached Video shows this process in < 1 minute.

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Assigning Loads/Supports

Next step is assigning loads and supports

Load Cases 5-7 are unit loads in specific

directions along global axis on back bracket

connection point

Load Cases 1-4 are unit loads in specific

directions along global axis on the front

bracket connection point

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

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Optimization Setup

Due to the design freedom Additive Manufacturing gives, we are not assigning any manufacturing constraints. Inspire will give us the most optimized concept given only one Shape Control, Symmetry

along the Y-Z Plane. We will Maximize Stiffness given a 30% Mass Target.

Copyright © 2014 solidThinking, Inc. Proprietary and Confidential. All rights reserved.

Results

Results show a hollow, complex structure only manufacturable by Additive Manufacturing

Copyright © 2014 solidThinking, Inc. Proprietary and Confidential. All rights reserved.

Traditionally with Inspire we export this result to CAD for further refinement. Since we are 3D Printing this part, we will take this result at the STL level into Materialise 3-matic for refinement.

First we Import our Inspire STL result and clean it up with the automatic fixing

tools. Auto Adjust Normals is needed here. By just using the clean up tools in Materialise 3-matic we can prepare a

printable part, but we want a smoother, cleaner, and aesthetically pleasing part.

Copyright © 2014 solidThinking, Inc. Proprietary and Confidential. All rights reserved.

Using the sketching tools and CAD-like features in Materialise 3-matic, we manually create desirable contours based on Inspire’s results.

Copyright © 2014 solidThinking, Inc. Proprietary and Confidential. All rights reserved.

One of the best advantages in using Materialise 3-matic is its smoothing capabilities with tessellated surfaces:

By performing a Smooth > Reduce

> Subdivide > Smooth iteration,

we now see a much cleaner,

realigned STL of the previously

tessellated surfaces

Copyright © 2014 solidThinking, Inc. Proprietary and Confidential. All rights reserved.

Further comparison between Inspire results and refined, smoothed results from Materialise 3-matic

Copyright © 2014 solidThinking, Inc. Proprietary and Confidential. All rights reserved.

Lastly we make slight sizing modifications to the non design space lugs to account for shrinkage in the smoothing operation

Copyright © 2014 solidThinking, Inc. Proprietary and Confidential. All rights reserved.

Evolve Rendering Results

Results are now print ready (rendered with Evolve)

Copyright © 2014 solidThinking, Inc. Proprietary and Confidential. All rights reserved.

Evolve Rendering Results

Copyright © 2014 solidThinking, Inc. Proprietary and Confidential. All rights reserved.

Evolve Rendering Results

Approximate Bracket Weight: 3.553 lbs, ~ 40% Mass Savings

Copyright © 2014 solidThinking, Inc. Proprietary and Confidential. All rights reserved.

Contact:

solidThinking, Inc1820 E. Big Beaver Rd. Troy, MI 48108/ USA