LATTICE OPTIMIZATION OF ADDITIVELY MANUFACTURED PARTS: A CASE STUDY

Abstract

Additive manufacturing (AM) provides increased design flexibility compared to traditional manufacturing methods.However, this advantage is frequently diminished by the reduced mechanical performance. This is especially true for parts produced bythe most widespread AM technology,fused filament fabrication (FFF). The internal structure ofan FFF-produced part (the infill)istypically defined in a slicer, which is the software used to prepare G-codes for FFF machines. This process relies on predefined patterns without consideringthe mechanical performance of the part.However, various methods can be used to optimize the mechanical performance of an FFF printed part, such as topology optimization (TO) or generative design.We present a case study in which a subtype of TO, lattice optimization,wasused to optimizethe infill of a wall bracket. Thereby, the optimization process was based on the finite element method (FEM).In this way, it was possible to improve the mechanical properties of the bracketwhile keeping its mass at the same level, which confirms the advantage of lattice-optimization-based infill generation over standard infill generation in slicers.