Colloquia

Summary

ERIKS Industrial Plastics currently applies several conventional production methods to produce parts for MRO & OEM clients. There is, however, a constant desire to extend production capability by for example using new innovative, production technologies. Recently, this led to the adoption of Digital Light Processing (DLP) 3D printing.

This thesis is focused on creating guidelines for the adoption, application and optimization of DLP 3D printing at industrial-scale production. Research was conducted amongst customers of ERIKS Industrial Plastics to establish general requirements of OEM companies for the adoption of AM processes in industrial production. These requirements were used to set-up a research strategy for the creation of guidelines for the application and optimization of DLP 3D printing.

To investigate the application of DLP 3D printing at industrial production level a manifold design of a customer of ERIKS Industrial Plastics was redesigned and consolidated with other parts. During the process generative design and topology optimization software were used to showcase how to take full advantage of the design possibilities DLP 3D printing offers.

Lastly, experimental research was conducted for the optimization of DLP process parameters on production quality. The printing procedure, washing procedure and post-curing procedure were analysed to discover the most influential process parameters on three quality parameters: dimensional accuracy, surface roughness & tensile material properties. Using a Design of Experiments (DoE) process guidelines were created for the optimisation of DLP process parameters to achieve high quality parts.