Conference Agenda

The increasing demand for large, complex metals parts requires enhanced productivity and cost efficiency — goals that conventional Selective Laser Melting / Laser Powder Bed Fusion (SLM / LPBF) cannot fully achieve. The innovative Macro-SLM machine concept addresses this challenge by integrating high-power laser systems with cost-effective coarse-grain metal particles. This combination merges the complexity of SLM-parts with the efficiency of direct energy deposition. As a result, Macro-SLM significantly reduces production costs for large, complex metal parts. Components with a dimension in the cubic metre range can be built at rates up to 10 kg/h. This work presents the Macro-SLM setup and experimental results for steel samples. Tensile tests demonstrated that the mechanical properties of the as-built samples exceed the required standards. Additional data is provided for fatigue and hardness tests. The potential of the Macro-SLM process is further illustrated by full size prototypes of industrial parts.

Additive repair using Powder Bed Fusion with Laser Beam (PBF-LB/M) offers significant potential for the sustainable restoration of small metallic components. Larger, high-value parts remain challenging to repair, as the limited build volume of PBF-LB/M constrains its applicability. This paper presents MESSIAH, a large-scale additive manufacturing system designed to repair components up to 2.5 meters in height. A repair process chain is introduced, addressing key challenges such as damage analysis, repair geometry design, and the preparation of the machine and part environment. The latter is particularly critical for ensuring precise alignment, sealing, and thermal control during processing. MESSIAH enables scalable additive repair for large components, reducing material usage, increasing process reliability, and extending the service life of large metallic components.

Due to the limited production rates of AM technologies, like LPBF, the market and investment hype of AM has come to the slope of enlightenment, moving towards the plateau of productivity.

To further increase the diversity of AM machine designs and to solve limitations of conventional LPBF the authors have rethought the kinematics of LPBF machines. Inspired by centrifugal casting the metal powder is held on a circular track with high angular velocities causing a centrifugal acceleration of the particles in the powder bed, that overcomes gravitation. The laser optics is centered in the rotational axis melting the high velocity particles.

Process limitations are caused by the tradeoff between stabilized powder distribution and limited scanning speed. To increase processability and allow scalability the independent rotation of laser beam and powder bed were installed. This paper shows the development of a first prototype and initial process trials.

Additive Manufacturing (AM) has emerged as a more sustainable alternative to other conventional manufacturing processes (e.g. machining). In this study a real-time monitoring system is used to monitor the laser directed energy deposition (DED-LB/P) process by a high speed IR camera, and acquire the actual values of the processing parameters (laser power, processing speed, powder flow, carrier and shielding gas flows, robot TCP coordinates and orientation) and power consumption of the AM equipment (laser, robot, powder feeder, and other auxiliary equipment). This monitoring system allows to perform the optimization of the DED-LB/P process regarding component quality, material consumption, and energy efficiency. Different process parameters, path planning and manufacturing strategies to produce Ti6Al4V alloy parts are compared according to both quality acceptance criteria and sustainability performance indicators (energy consumption, carbon footprint, resource use). These sustainability performance indicators can be used to compare DED-LB/P process with other AM and conventional manufacturing technologies.