EOS exhibits additive manufacturing at formnext 2016

Additive manufacturing is a key element for current and future production lines and is increasingly finding its way into serial production. Scalable and automated production, as well as a seamless integration of AM into existing production environments, are the challenges companies are facing. With its new integrated and modular systems, EOS offers a clear response to this development and helps companies as a reliable partner to achieve the next level of industrial 3D printing.

Dr Tobias Abeln, Chief Technical Officer (CTO) at EOS says: "The goal is to integrate AM technology wisely and efficiently into existing and future production lines. Our customers are facing topics such as quality of parts, quality control, scalability, automation and total cost of ownership in this context. We address these challenges with EOS solutions, and make sure that companies can put industrial 3D printing to successful use."

In combination with the new, high-productivity four-laser system EOS M 400-4 for manufacturing metal parts on an industrial scale, EOS will present its Shared Modules concept for the first time at formnext 2016. The flexible and scalable concept consists of several peripheral modules and allows DMLS production (Direct Metal Laser Sintering) to be integrated in industrial manufacturing. Automated peripheral modules and transport logistics ensure an efficient supply to several metal systems from the EOS M 400 generation. This means that all set-up, unpacking, transportation and sieving actions can be carried out independent of, and parallel to, the AM build process. Users profit from a high degree of flexibility and scalability: No matter if for one or several systems, Shared Modules has been designed to meet current and future developments. Selected pilot customers with very demanding requirements are already using individual components from the EOS Shared Modules concept.

With its EOSPRINT 2.0, EOS offers a comprehensive AM CAM environment for engineers who want to fully leverage the benefits of Additive Manufacturing with production-ready design. EOS has integrated numerous improvements and addressed customer requirements in the latest version, particularly in the field of operability. This makes the initial steps of the actual AM build process easier. Also, users increase their productivity in construction. Experienced developers also profit from the new EOS ParameterEditor module as part of EOSPRINT: intuitive in its handling and with a large tool set - for example new exposure strategies can be developed, that offer greater freedom for application-specific parameter optimisation and help improve the part quality.

EOS cooperates with Siemens and Autodesk on EOSPRINT to further improve the user experience:

• With EOSPRINT for Siemens NX, users can integrate the powerful EOS CAM software in the Siemens CAD tool Siemens NX - thus allowing designers to work continuously in one familiar software environment. Thanks to this integration, users get an efficient environment in which they can experience and optimise their product ideas before starting the AM build process.
• Users of Autodesk Netfabb 2017 can now select EOS systems for data preparation in the Workspace Manager and send build jobs directly to the EOS systems via the EOS OpenJob Interface of EOSPRINT. What's more, for the simulation of the AM build process with metal Netfabb users can select and use the matching values for EOS materials directly.

All of these measures enable companies to manufacture additively in series faster and more reliably with EOSPRINT.

EOS extends its EOSTATE Monitoring Suite for quality assurance and process development in metal 3D printing by the new tool EOSTATE Exposure. This system, consisting of a special camera and the EOSTATE Exposure software, can be used for the intelligent, real-time monitoring of the AM build process since it analyses the melting and cooling behaviour of the complete melt pool. Indicators that provide feedback on possible sources of errors can therefore be detected automatically and evaluated by the user. In this way, companies can draw conclusions about the quality of the part built and ensure a traceable and constantly high quality of the parts. EOSTATE Exposure supplements the EOS monitoring product EOSTATE MeltPool that is already available. These make up the EOSTATE Monitoring Suite together with applications for system and powder bed monitoring. With its Monitoring Suite, EOS addresses the high requirements on quality assurance that companies especially in the aerospace or medical sectors have to satisfy.

Further information of the new offerings from EOS can be found at www.eos.info.