In past years, additive technologies have gained more interest in academia and industrial applications. Especially technologies such as “Direct Energy Deposition (DED)” and “Wire-Arc Additive Manufacturing (WAAM)” are frequently used for various industrial scenarios such as repair processes or multi-material applications.
While the potentials of additive technologies have been demonstrated in recent years, still several “trial and error” experiments are necessary in order to achieve stable manufacturing process conditions and to fulfill part quality requirements. Especially the complexity of multi-material additive manufacturing is much higher compared to single material-based AM due to various factors. These include the compatibility of different materials, identification of appropriate processes, finding process parameters that work well with different materials, and reducing material-specific and associated consumables.
These and other research results support the vision of automated process planning steps for additive process chains, making the usage of such technologies more efficient and provide industrial companies with an earlier return on investment. The new methods not only save time, but also up to 80% material, depending on the component geometry.