Machine-specific increase of process capability in additive manufacturing

The presented work deals with the increase of process capability in additive manufacturing by extending existing methods for process optimization with regard to the unique behavior of individual machines. The developed method covers the acquisition of data, which can be used for describing the machine characteristic. Depending on the case-specific relevance of the machine characteristic, it can be fed back into already existing methods for process optimization or into the process chain in additive layer manufacturing. The exemplary application of the developed method and its economic evaluation were done for the laser sintering technology. It could be demonstrated that the shrinkage in laser sintering can be reduced in a machine-specific manner. Hence, the process capability for the analyzed machine was increased.