ADDITIVE MANUFACTURING COMPLIANT WITH REQUIREMENTS: an ECONOMIC CHALLENGE for DEVELOPMENT of TECHNOLOGY
The first objective was to get an idea of a typical cost breakdown of parts manufactured by additive technologies.
The second one was to identify the cost drivers of these powder bed technologies. To confirm the rough assessment done by Stelia, a global request for proposal has been launched on aeronautical tubes & pipes parts. After analysis of these proposals, three main conclusions have been drawn:
- The market seems to be scattered as the supply chain still present a large scale of prices for similar parts.
- Cost drivers are not the same as on current technologies like machining – the most remarkable difference appears in the weight of raw material in the price of the part.
- All post-manufacturing operations, necessary to reach the aeronautical requirements, represent a considerable weight in the final price - a specific highlight has been done on the costs of surface roughness improvement operations through a typical case.
To guarantee the compliance of its products with the requirements, Stelia identified surface roughness improvement as a key competence. A state of the art has been done of technologies available and the most suitable have been evaluated on Venturi part.
The results show that the usual expected values of Ra from milling processes are not easily achievable with conventional post-processing technologies especially for inner surfaces of tubes.
The analysis of measurement methods contributes to raise the question of the relevance of a certain number of requirements such as a common roughness target for all surfaces.