Page 14 - 3D Metal Printing Spring 2018

Automated Support Generation
The savings just keep on coming, from powder conservation to reduced time for support design, development and removal. BY BRAD F. KUVIN, PUBLISHER/
EDITORIAL DIRECTOR
Support structures—you can’t live with ’em and you can’t live without ’em. These necessary evils of the metal additive-manufacturing (AM) world, which make even the most complex builds possible, can unfortunately add a signifi- cant amount of time and cost to any proj- ect. By the time you consider the manual labor needed to design and generate the supports, and then remove them, the labor hours for nonprinting time can reach into the dozens. Add in costs related to powder entrapped in the supports—which ulti- mately becomes waste—and budgets can bust.
All of this explains precisely why
Materialise introduced, late last year, its e-Stage for Metal support-generation software, building on its time-tested e- Stage for Stereolithography software used in industry for several years. Back in November 2017 when the company introduced the software at the formnext tradeshow in Germany, it touted Airbus APWorks as a beta test site, which offered up this testimonial:
“We are convinced of the potential for e-Stage for Metal to reduce powder con- sumption, reduce post-processing time and increase build speed while still guar- anteeing a high build stability. This is an important step toward reducing costs.”
12 | 3D METAL PRINTING • SPRING 2018
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A Proto Labs technician in the company’s build-prep department takes part builds through the production process from part design to build here using e-Stage for Metal software to develop support structures.