Recent Mega-Trends like the internet of things and the growth of automation require parts with built-in electronic components. While conventional manufacturing technologies are not sufficient to produce complex smart parts for highly demanding environments, multi-material additive manufacturing offers a solution for this problem. In multi-material additive manufacturing by laser-based powder bed fusion (PBF-LB/MM) two or more materials can be processed at the same time. There are different approaches using nozzles, suction modules, drums with pressurized air or the photoelectric effect to manufacture 3-D-multi-material parts in PBF-LB. These approaches enable arbitrary material composition in components and thus allows the printing of smart parts.
With PBF-LB/MM there are nearly no limitations regarding the geometry and location in the part for the sensor.
To achieve this goal many different and novel materials have to be qualified for PBF-LB. On the one side metallic or semi-conducting materials with special electrical properties and on the other side electrically non-conducting materials for insulating the sensors have to be processed. The latter one posing an enormous challenge for PBF-LB due to low absorptivity for the laser wavelength as well as low thermal conductivity. Processing and combining materials with such different properties in the same process requires new approaches for the material qualifying.
When overcoming this challenges, it is possible to manufacture sensors such as thermocouples, strain gauges or even piezoelectric sensors directly into the component. This poster summarizes the challenges for manufacturing components with sensors using PBF-LB/MM and shows approaches to achieve this goal. The topics are illustrated using the examples of thermocouples as well as strain gauges on the one hand and the processing of ceramics as well as glasses on the other hand.