Laser Powder Bed Fusion

More complex component designs and monolithically combined assemblies can be manufactured using LPBF without additional production costs. For example, LPBF enables the industry to integrate additional functions or internal lightweight structures into a component as well as to produce topology-optimized components. In addition, since sensors can be directly integrated in functional components, users are able to acquire data relevant to an application, an advantage that makes innovative applications such as predictive maintenance possible.

With the LPBF process, individualized components with different geometries can be produced by one process. 

With LPBF, prototypes and series components can be produced in small to medium quantities from a wide range of metal and polymer materials in a very short period of time. One systematic advantage is that LPBF can shorten the development time since the number of feasible iteration cycles increases, which means, in turn, that time to market of a new product is shortened considerably.

To establish laser powder bed fusion as an economical manufacturing process and to exploit the process-specific advantages described above in production, research needs to view the process chain in its entirety: from component design to LPBF process control and systems engineering to finishing. By using digital images of physical components (digital twin), component properties can be defined before production and implemented directly in the physical component using LPBF. In addition, new solutions such as quality assurance of the manufactured components and data-based control of the LPBF process are made possible thanks to current technological approaches such as artificial intelligence to process data along the production chain.

Since the mid-1990s, ILT has been continuing to develop the LPBF process in close cooperation with leading industrial companies and research institutions, taking into account the entire process chain. Thanks to our expertise and many years of experience, our experts can provide you with individual support from an initial idea through feasibility studies, process and plant development all the way to implementing the results in production. You can rely not only on our extensive equipment, consisting of various commercial systems and highly flexible laboratory equipment, but also on our know-how in the field of laser beam source and optics development.

Through our close cooperation with other Fraunhofer Institutes, the FH Aachen - University of Applied Sciences, the RWTH Aachen University, the Aachen Center for Additive Manufacturing (ACAM) as well as the International Center for Turbomachinery Manufacturing (ICTM), you will benefit from the combined expertise of the Aachen location in the field of additive manufacturing.

The range of services includes the following R&D tasks along the entire process chain:

• Design of functionally adapted components
• Development of hardware and software solutions for additive manufacturing using LPBF (systems engineering)
• Solutions for process monitoring and adapted process control to increase productivity and component quality
• Life cycle assessment to view the additive manufacturing process chain in its entirety
• Full characterization from powder to component
• Feasibility studies as well as manufacturing of prototypes and small series
• Market studies and consulting as well as workshops and seminars in the field of additive manufacturing