Blogs
The aerospace industry has successfully been using metal Additive Manufacturing – Direct Metal Laser Melting (DMLM) technology as it helps in simplifying the manufacturing steps, building high quality complex parts, shortening the design process, improving part performance, etc.
Metal AM technology is considered for aerospace parts printing of small/medium batches at relatively low cost, such as for engine and turbine parts (turbine blades, fuel systems, guide vanes, etc.) manufacturing.
This article is on the additively manufactured cable routing mount for the latest airbus model. Sogeti High Tech has developed a cable mount of Airbus A350 XWB successfully with EOS team.
1. About Project – A Cable Routing Mount
A cable routing mount is required for the power supply and data transportation of a camara located in the vertical stabilizer to provide the view of the outside to the passengers and orientation of the ground the pilots. Conventionally manufactured cable routing mount consisted of 30 individual parts combination of sheet metal parts and many rivets and total manufacturing time was 70 days.
This project’s requirement was the production of functionally operational cable mount parts in the lead time of only just two weeks. The project involves analysis of the part, optimization of the design, and final production in that short time frame with compliance with the strict requirements for subsequent aviation industry certification.
2. Metal AM Cable Routing Mount – Solution and Results
Considering the situation – like part’s functionality, complex structure, and time frame – metal Additive manufacturing was the ideal solution. And, Sogeti High Tech followed the tried and tested development process to manufacture this part with metal AM (DMLM technology).
The design freedom offered by metal AM helps in integrating the whole assembly in a single part, hence, weight saving without affecting its functional requirement. Dedicated software used to re-design (topology optimization) the part.
The AlSi10Mg material for the cable mount was considered which ideal for thin-walled and complex structure.
Fig. 1 A cable Routing Mount – Material AlSi10Mg (Source: EOS)
Final part printing was done on EOS M 400 machine with the layer thickness of 90 µm. Final required time to manufacture this cable mount was 19 hours against 70 days for conventional manufacturing methods. Hence, reduction in production time by 90% is achieved with metal AM (DMLM) technology.
New designed cable mount resulted in significant weight reduction, i.e., from 452 gm for original part with conventional manufacturing to 317 gm for additively manufactured cable mount.
In addition to above mentioned results, i.e. lead time and weight reduction, metal AM offers others various other benefits as a consequence of these benefits and those are reduction in post processing cost, no longer need be held in stock, reduced development time, and reduced fuel consumption as a result of weight reduction.
About Us
We are Innovae3D company specialized in producing the parts using metal 3D printing, i.e. Direct Metal Laser Melting (DMLM) technology, for various applications. Innovae3D is AS 9100 and ISO 9001 certified company.
Innovae3D provides the complete solutions (starts from designing, printing, post-processing, to quality control and assurance) for tooling, automotive, aerospace, defense, consumer electronics, medical, oil and gas, and industrial sectors.