Review on design guidelines for selective laser melting

Abstract

 Selective laser melting (SLM) is a metal additive manufacturing (AM) process which is used for fabrication of complex geometry parts layer by layer directly from 3D CAD model. SLM gives boundless opportunities to build highly complex shapes which are not possible to achieve by traditional manufacturing process. however, SLM is not totally freeform fabrication as it has inherent process limitations. Design engineers frequently lack an understanding of these process limitations and their impact on the final part. Here comes the need for developing design guidelines for AM processes to help design engineers while designing the part for selective laser melting. This paper reviews general design guidelines that to be considered for building the part through SLM process. Research papers regarding support structure generation, part orientation and topologically optimization are referred. These rules aim to reduce cost, build failures, built time and wastage of material.