During the last years, 3D-printing has become more important, mainly because of the production of geometrical prototypes and, in a few cases, of functional components. Due to the progress in printing technology, more and more materials and composites can be processed so that new fields of applications are developed, which are investigated in research projects at the ISW.
The research is focused on control technology solutions (CNC, path planning, process control of the printing head) combined with suitable kinematics (multi-axis kinematics consisting of more than 3 kinematic axes, cable kinematics).The multi-axis additive manufacturing, which means the additional use of rotation axes, is a unique selling point, which provides decisive advantages in productivity (saving of support structures) and in component quality (minimizing the step effect and strength optimization by means of orientation of paths along the force flow). Additionally, research is done about specialized printing processes like shell printing, carbon printing (continuous fiber) and further multi-material technologies.
Pictures from the Project
