Promoted content: MTC develops simulation app to revolutionise design for additively manufactured parts

One of the greatest challenges in designing high-precision parts is being able to quickly fabricate them in a repeatable way to meet very tight specifications. If you’re designing aircraft engine fuel injectors, for instance, you need precisely measured parts in order for airplane machinery to perform properly and for passengers to entrust their safety to the airline. In order to achieve this, engineers must often optimise not only a specific part, but the manufacturing process itself.

Additive manufacturing, also known as 3D printing, has been on the rise in recent years as a novel and promising way to create parts with less material waste and even to build shapes that were previously impossible to fabricate through more traditional methods.

The Manufacturing Technology Centre (MTC) in Coventry, UK, researches additive manufacturing techniques and supplies designs and prototypes to part producers in the aerospace industry. One additive manufacturing method they employ frequently is called laser powder bed fusion, which uses powder layers tens of microns thick to build parts layer by layer using a laser. The system follows a predefined toolpath to fabricate a part with very fine geometrical details.