A process planning framework for lens metal additive manufacturing

Producing metallic parts using Laser Engineered Net Shaping (LENS) additive manufacturing allows for a wide range of flexibility and customization while reducing waste material compared to traditional methods. One of the important aspects of additive manufacturing is process planning, and there are many decisions that must be made in order to convert a CAD representation of a desired component into a finished part. These include determining the build orientation, generating support structures for necessary areas, slicing the model, and creating the toolpath that the machine will follow. The interdependence of these tasks is complex; so, traditional methods that only consider individual parameters result in an inferior end product. This paper introduces a framework to determine optimal settings and parameters for metal additive manufacturing. It outlines a series of steps to reduce build time and cost while ensuring high quality components. The relationships between various parameters are addressed. Commercial software packages are examined for usability and value in the process planning methodology. The paper concludes with suggestions for further research and experiments to understand the relationships between process parameters for LENS systems.