Additive Manufacturing with AAC

Additive Manufacturing Technologies offer new capabilities on the design for complex parts. However, based on our extensive expertise at AAC there are still several drawbacks on the materials & processing side to overcome, e.g.:

• Availability and price of raw materials for AMT relevant for space applications (light weight, high stiffness, high strength, low cte, demisable, etc.);
• Materials properties depend strongly on the Additive Manufacturing Technology as well as on the processing & post-processing parameter. Thus, materials & components are usually not similar to their conventional produced counterparts (e.g. microstructure, surface roughness, mechanical properties like strain at failure, etc.);
• Quality Assurance for the reproducibility of Additive Manufactured parts, e.g. in-situ monitoring and NDI are needed.

AAC as ESA certified Testhouse is specialized in materials & components testing especially in space relevant environments (4K – 2,300K). Since 2010, AAC is working together with 3D printing partner companies on the improvement of their 3D Printing Systems to develop new materials and components for conventional and especially space industry.  These projects are mainly b2b contracted or funded by the Austrian FFG or European Space Agency. AAC is offering for the development projects of their partner its expertise in the characterization of the materials properties and components, e.g. microstructural investigations by SEM, quasistatic and dynamic mechanical properties (strength, strain, fatigue), stress corrosion cracking, non-destructive testing, etc..