Presentation of the problem and objective of the experiment

When using industrial machines for additive manufacturing, heat and its dissipation to individual structural elements of the machine play one of the major roles. One of the aspects of the influence of heat is the heated working space inside the machine itself that is very important because most materials used in different industries require heated work chambers, passively or actively heated. The vision of this project is to establish and predict the impact of this heat on the structure and motion system of the machine using HPC infrastructure.

Description

As part of FF4euroHPC, a European initiative to make it easier for small and medium-sized enterprises to access high-performance computers (HPCs) and related technologies, funding has been approved for the “Multi-head Additive Manufacturing with Optimal HPC Thermal Stabilization (AMOTS)” experiment. The holder of the AMOTS experiment is Mikrotvornica, a domestic company specializing in prototyping and small production batches using 3D printers, which will implement the experiment in cooperation with the Ruđer Bošković Institute and the Center for Informatics and Computing and the Rijeka company Yotta Advanced Computing, from which you will gain experience and professional support in the application of HPC technology for successful project execution.

The goal of the AMOTS project (or its full name Multi-head Additive Manufacturing with Optimal HPC Thermal Stabilization) is to establish and anticipate the impact of heat on machine design and system by checking within the simulation of HPC infrastructure use which should result in improved assembly and calibration of the machine itself.

The experiment is divided into 3 phases. In the first phase, a digital model of a new machine assembly will be constructed. Then, in the second phase, the first series of detailed simulations on HPC infrastructure of the heat influence and dissipation in the new machine will be performed. Finally, in the third phase, the physical machine will be assembled, based on the simulations performed in the previous step. Then, through an iterative process of HPC simulations and machine fine-tuning, the machine will be calibrated and tested. The result that can be obtained with this project allows complete control over the parameters that affect the dimensional stability of 3D printed products.

The experiment will last a year, and with it we could contribute to the improvement of additive production in working with engineering materials and minimize the possibility of error – that is, unwanted dimensional instability of the produced 3D printed piece.
More on the project page: https://www.ff4eurohpc.eu/en/experiments/2021070911562140/multihead_additive_manufacturing_with_optimal_hpc_thermal_stabilization

Organisations involved:

End User: Mikrotvornica
HPC Provider: Yotta Advanced Computing
HPC Center: Ruđer Bošković Institute