Environmental Vibration Mitigation for Additive Manufacturing Equipment

Additive manufacturing (AM) is a rapidly evolving technology that is being used in a growing number of new and different applications. As applications become more diverse, so will the environments within which AM equipment is relied upon to operate effectively and produce high quality parts. One specific challenge is maintaining part quality when AM equipment is required to operate in environments with significant vibration sources. Such external vibration sources can cause undesirable print defects that render the finished part unfit for use.  Etegent Technologies, Ltd., The Ohio State University Center for Design and Manufacturing Excellence (CDME), and Stratasys, are partnering to develop an approach to mitigate the impact of environmental vibration on AM print quality. Some potential solutions are printer control compensation, active vibration mitigation, passive vibration mitigation, modification of printer structural components, or a combination thereof. In a preliminary experiment presented in this proposal, the team created visible print defects by exposing a consumer grade AM printer to vibration that is potentially encountered on Navy ships, as indicated by MIL-STD-167A. A simplified model was constructed to estimate the vibration attenuation that can be achieved by one possible mitigation approach - a passive vibration isolation system. While this is just one of many potential solutions, it was chosen as a straw-man design for this proposal as it would be low cost, rugged, and applicable to a wide range of printer and environmental vibration characteristics. In the Phase I effort the team will conduct a comprehensive study to understand the fundamental physical phenomenology behind different vibration-induced part defects and part quality degradation, and determine the most pragmatic mitigation approaches for the Navy’s needs. Modeling, analysis, and lab testing will be conducted to estimate the effectiveness of different mitigation approaches. In Phase II and Phase III, the team will implement the optimal mitigation approach on representative AM equipment, demonstrate capabilities in a lab, install technology on a ship, and collect data required to quantify its effectiveness in practice.