At the heart of the additive manufacturing platform

The Additive Manufacturing Center is a facility of the Institut Polytechnique de Paris designed and hosted by ENSTA Paris and the École Polytechnique that brings together in a single laboratory equipment for the manufacture, observation and characterization of parts made or repaired by additive manufacturing.

The heart of the additive manufacturing platform is the BeAM 3D printing machine. It works on the principle of a projection of metallic powder melted on the fly by a laser energy source. It creates homogeneous, dense metal deposits with characteristics between those of foundry parts and those of the forge.

This machine offers the possibility to manufacture structures with optimized geometry, to produce specific microstructures for materials, to work on certain metals with limited weldability, to repair damaged parts or to add innovative functions to existing parts. By optimizing the entire design chain, the optimized structure can achieve performance levels that are sometimes higher than those achievable with a more conventional process.

This platform allows the development of specific "structural tests", with more complex geometries than the simple test piece, much more representative of a real industrial part. This is an original capability of this platform because it approaches the real stresses to which parts are subjected in the daily industrial environment, by reproducing, for example, more random loads and the appearance of cracks.

Guided tour with Fabien Szmytka, associate professor at the ENSTA Paris Mechanics Unit to which this platform is attached.

 

thumbnail Plateforme de fabrication additive ENSTA Paris / École polytechnique