Boeing

Powder Bed Fusion Build Process Interruption Study

Additive manufacturing (3D printing) with metals has the potential for significant weight savings in aerospace applications, along with numerous other advantages. To realize these advantages, the sources and amounts of variability in component strength and fatigue properties must be well understood. A “round robin” study started at UW last year focused on intra-build, intra-machine, and inter-machine variation using a EOS M290 printer to laser-sinter titanium components. This capstone will expand this study to better understand additional sources of variation, such as typical process parameters and the effect of build interruption. Students will examine the existing data and design samples, experiments, and an interruption procedure to test important factors affecting variation. ME prerequisites: None