CN113618088A

CN113618088A - Additive manufacturing equipment and wind field structure thereof

Info

Publication number: CN113618088A
Application number: CN202111003953.XA
Authority: CN
Inventors: 谢洋生; 刘鑫炎; 潘良明; 肖建军; 苗俊杰; 谭振中
Original assignee: Hunan Farsoon High Tech Co Ltd
Current assignee: Hunan Farsoon High Tech Co Ltd
Priority date: 2021-08-30
Filing date: 2021-08-30
Publication date: 2021-11-09

Abstract

The utility model provides an increase material manufacturing equipment and wind field structure thereof, wherein the wind field structure includes at least one first admission line, two or more second admission lines, a plurality of pipeline and fan of breathing in, at least one first admission line sets up in the top central zone of the working chamber of increase material manufacturing equipment, be used for the gas input working chamber through the fan output, two or more second admission lines use first admission line to carry out the setting of encircleing as the center, be used for the gas input working chamber through the fan output, a plurality of pipeline of breathing in sets up in the bottom of working chamber, and distribute in proper order around the working plane of increase material manufacturing, be used for breathing in the gas in the working chamber and carry the fan, the mouth of pipe that is used for breathing in gas of pipeline is higher than the working plane, in order to square the annular circulation air current of full breadth on the working plane. The invention forms full-breadth annular circulating airflow above the working plane, thereby greatly improving the performance consistency of large-size printing workpieces.

Description

Additive manufacturing equipment and wind field structure thereof

Technical Field

The application relates to the technical field of additive manufacturing, in particular to additive manufacturing equipment and a wind field structure thereof.

Background

The additive manufacturing technology is an advanced manufacturing technology with the distinct characteristics of digital manufacturing, high flexibility and adaptability, direct CAD model driving, high speed, rich and various material types and the like, and has a very wide application range because the additive manufacturing technology is not limited by the complexity of the shape of a part and does not need any tool die. The Selective Laser Melting (SLM) is one of the rapidly developed additive manufacturing technologies in recent years, and it uses powder material as raw material, and adopts Laser to scan the cross section of three-dimensional entity layer by layer to complete prototype manufacturing, and is not limited by the complexity of part shape, and does not need any tooling die, and its application range is wide. The basic process of the selective laser melting process is as follows: the powder feeding device feeds a certain amount of powder to the surface of the working platform, the powder paving device flatly paves a layer of powder material on the bottom plate of the forming cylinder or the upper surface of the formed part, and the laser galvanometer system controls laser to scan the powder layer of the solid part according to the cross section outline of the layer with approximately unchanged spot size and beam energy, so that the powder is melted and bonded with the formed part below; after the section of one layer is sintered, the working platform is lowered by the thickness of one layer, the powder spreading device is used for spreading a layer of uniform and compact powder on the working platform, the section of a new layer is scanned and sintered, and the whole prototype is manufactured through scanning and stacking of a plurality of layers.

In the selective laser melting equipment, the generation of splashes which can affect the performance of the formed workpiece is inevitable, so that a protective gas flow with good flow is required to be formed above the sintering area in the forming process to carry the splashes generated in the melting process away from the forming area.

And along with the promotion of jumbo size shaping work piece demand, the equipment volume also will be bigger and bigger, the drawback of the combination of traditional single mouth of blowing and inlet scoop is enlargied, the regional increase of shaping can make the produced protection air current of traditional structure produce bigger decay in the direction of motion, thereby lead to melting the forming in-process or blow away working powder because of the wind speed is too high, or can not take away the splash that produces from the work area because of the wind speed is too low, and then make the uniformity of shaping work piece performance reduce by a wide margin, probably lead to the unqualified and scrap of shaping work piece performance when serious.

Disclosure of Invention

In view of the above, there is a need to provide an additive manufacturing apparatus and a wind field structure thereof, which can form a full-width annular circulating airflow above a working plane, thereby improving the performance consistency of large-sized formed workpieces.

In order to achieve the above object, the present invention provides a wind field structure of an additive manufacturing apparatus, comprising at least one first air inlet duct, two or more second air inlet ducts, a plurality of air suction ducts, and a fan, the at least one first air inlet duct is disposed in a top central region of a working chamber of the additive manufacturing apparatus, used for inputting the gas output by the fan into the working cavity, two or more than two second air inlet pipelines are arranged around the first air inlet pipeline as the center, used for inputting the gas output by the fan into the working cavity, the plurality of air suction pipelines are arranged at the bottom of the working cavity and are sequentially distributed around the working plane of additive manufacturing, the pipe orifice of the suction pipe for sucking the gas is higher than the working plane so as to form a full-width annular circulating airflow above the working plane.

As a further preferable scheme of the invention, the pipe orifice of the air suction pipeline for sucking air is 30mm-100mm higher than the working plane.

As a further preferable scheme of the present invention, the cross section of one end of the suction pipe located in the working chamber is square, the cross section of the other end of the suction pipe is circular, and the cross section of the square is larger than that of the circle, so that the suction pipe is of a special-shaped structure.

As a further preferable mode of the present invention, there is one or more first air intake ducts, and when there are a plurality of first air intake ducts, the plurality of first air intake ducts are distributed in a circular or array shape.

As a further preferable scheme of the present invention, the wind farm structure further includes a main air inlet port and a main air outlet port, one end of the main air inlet port is connected to the fan through an air blowing pipeline, the other end of the main air inlet port is respectively communicated with the first air inlet pipeline through the first air flow channel, and is communicated with the second air inlet pipeline through the second air flow channel, one end of the main air outlet port collects air sucked by the plurality of air suction pipelines through a plurality of pipelines, and the other end of the main air outlet port is connected to the fan through an air suction pipeline.

As a further preferable scheme of the present invention, the wind farm structure further includes a flow dividing device disposed at the air inlet main port, and the flow dividing device is configured to divide the air flow of the air inlet main port, and make the gas flow entering the first gas flow channel larger than the gas flow entering the second gas flow channel.

As a further preferable aspect of the present invention, the wind farm structure further includes a filter device, and the filter device is disposed at any position of the air suction pipeline.

The invention also provides additive manufacturing equipment which comprises a working cavity, a powder spreading device, a forming cylinder and the wind field structure of any additive manufacturing equipment, wherein a through hole is formed in the central area of the bottom of the working cavity, and the forming cylinder moves up and down in the through hole to realize forming of a workpiece to be printed on a working plane.

As a further preferable aspect of the present invention, the additive manufacturing apparatus further includes a moving device, and the plurality of air suction pipes are moved up and down by the moving device to make room for the powder spreading device by raising the plurality of air suction pipes when the powder spreading device performs the powder spreading work.

As a further preferable scheme of the invention, the through hole and the forming cylinder are both matched in a round shape or a square shape. The additive manufacturing equipment and the wind field structure thereof comprise at least one first gas inlet pipeline, two or more second gas inlet pipelines, a plurality of gas suction pipelines and a fan, wherein the at least one first gas inlet pipeline is arranged in the central area of the top of a working cavity of the additive manufacturing equipment and used for inputting gas output by the fan into the working cavity, the two or more second gas inlet pipelines are arranged in a surrounding mode with the first gas inlet pipeline as the center and used for inputting gas output by the fan into the working cavity, the plurality of gas suction pipelines are arranged at the bottom of the working cavity and are sequentially distributed around the working plane for sucking and conveying gas in the working cavity to the fan, a pipe orifice of each gas suction pipeline for sucking gas is higher than the working plane so as to form a full-width annular circulating airflow above the working plane, therefore, the defect that the quality of the workpiece to be printed is poor due to the fact that wind fields of all areas of the working plane of the large-size forming cylinder are inconsistent is overcome, and therefore the full-breadth annular circulating airflow is formed above the working plane, the performance consistency of the large-size printing workpiece is greatly improved, and the forming of the workpiece to be printed is improved.

Drawings

Fig. 1 is a three-dimensional view of a first embodiment of an additive manufacturing apparatus according to the present invention;

FIG. 2 is a wind field flow diagram of an embodiment provided by a wind field structure of an additive manufacturing apparatus of the present invention;

FIG. 3 is a top view of FIG. 1;

FIG. 4 is a partial perspective view of FIG. 1;

FIG. 5 is a cross-sectional view of a first embodiment of the first air intake duct or the second air intake duct of the present invention;

FIG. 6 is a cross-sectional view of a second embodiment of the first air intake duct or the second air intake duct of the present invention;

FIG. 7 is a cross-sectional view of a third embodiment of the present invention provided by the first air intake duct or the second air intake duct;

fig. 8 is a top view of a second embodiment provided by an additive manufacturing apparatus of the present invention;

fig. 9 is a top view of a third embodiment provided by an additive manufacturing apparatus of the present invention;

fig. 10 is a top view of a fourth embodiment provided by an additive manufacturing apparatus of the present invention.

In the figure:

1. the laser device comprises a laser device body, 2, a working cavity, 3, a first air inlet pipeline, 4, a second air inlet pipeline, 5, an air suction pipeline, 6, a fan, 7, an air inlet main port, 8, an air outlet main port, 9, a substrate, 10, an air blowing pipeline, 11, an air suction pipeline, 12, a first air flow channel, 13, a second air flow channel, 14 and a through hole.

Detailed Description

In order to make the objects, technical solutions and advantages of the present application more apparent, the present application is described in further detail below with reference to the accompanying drawings and embodiments. It should be understood that the specific embodiments described herein are merely illustrative of the present application and are not intended to limit the present application.

As shown in fig. 1 to 4, the present invention provides a wind field structure of an additive manufacturing apparatus, including at least one first air inlet pipe 3, two or more second air inlet pipes 4, a plurality of air inlet pipes 5, and a fan 6, where the at least one first air inlet pipe 3 is disposed in a top center region of a working chamber 2 of the additive manufacturing apparatus, and is used to input air output by the fan 6 into the working chamber 2, an air flow F1 flowing from a top of the working chamber 2 to a bottom of the working chamber 2 is formed in the working chamber 2, the two or more second air inlet pipes 4 are disposed around the first air inlet pipe 3, and are used to input air output by the fan 6 into the working chamber 2, an air flow F2 flowing from the top of the working chamber 2 to the bottom of the working chamber 2 is formed in the working chamber 2, the plurality of air inlet pipes 5 are disposed at the bottom of the working chamber 2 and are sequentially distributed around a working plane of the additive manufacturing apparatus, for sucking and conveying the air in the working chamber 2 to a fan 6, the nozzle of the suction pipe 5 for sucking the air is higher than the working plane to form a full-width annular circulating airflow above the working plane. Several suction ducts 5 can be arranged without gaps, i.e. closely adjacent, but they can also be arranged at intervals. The working plane is the plane in which the piece to be printed is formed and is generally located on the base plate 9 above the forming cylinder.

The wind field structure still includes air inlet port 7 and air outlet port 8, the one end of air inlet port 7 is passed through the gas blowing pipeline 10 and is linked to each other with fan 6, and the other end is linked together with first admission line 3 through first gas runner 12 respectively to and be linked together with second admission line 4 through second gas runner 13, air outlet port 8 one end collects the gas that a plurality of admission lines 5 inhaled through a plurality of pipelines, and the other end links to each other with fan 6 through admission line 11. The gas entering the blowing pipeline 10 may be an inert gas, nitrogen, argon, or the like, or may be a mixture of a plurality of inert gases. The blower 6 converts the energy of the gas entering the suction line 11 so that the gas leaving the blower 6 enters the blowing line 10 with a certain kinetic energy.

In order to provide a more uniform and suitable wind field for the working plane, the nozzle of the suction duct 5 for sucking air is preferably 30mm-100mm higher than the working plane, although other parameters can be set according to the printing material and the area of the working plane, and are not limited herein.

In order to facilitate the arrangement of the air suction pipe and the matching of the air suction pipe with the air suction pipeline 11, it is preferable that the cross section of one end of the air suction pipe 5 in the working chamber 2 is square, the cross section of the other end is round, and the cross section of the square is larger than that of the round, so that the air suction pipe 5 is in a special-shaped structure, which can be specifically seen in fig. 4, but of course, the special-shaped structure can also be an approximate structure. It should be noted that, in a specific implementation, the air suction duct may also have other structures, and is not limited herein.

In a specific implementation, one first air inlet duct 3 is provided, as shown in fig. 1 to 8 and fig. 10, or a plurality of first air inlet ducts 3 are provided, as shown in fig. 9, and how to select the first air inlet duct according to the size of the working plane is specifically provided, for example, when the working plane is small, one first air inlet duct 3 is preferably provided, and when the working plane is large, a plurality of first air inlet ducts 3 are preferably provided. When the number of the first air inlet pipes 3 is multiple, the multiple first air inlet pipes 3 are distributed in a circular shape or an array shape, and may be distributed in other patterns, at this time, the second air inlet pipe 4 is disposed around the first air inlet pipe 3 as a center, that is, when the multiple first air inlet pipes 3 are distributed in a circular shape, the second air inlet pipe 4 may also be mostly distributed outside the circular shape, and be mostly distributed in the first air inlet pipe 3. The number of the second air inlet ducts 4 can be an odd number, or an even number, preferably an even number, and the specific size of the second air inlet ducts 4 can be adjusted according to the number of the second air inlet ducts 4.

As shown in fig. 5 to 7, the first air intake duct 3 is preferably rectangular and trapezoidal, and the second air intake duct 4 is preferably parallelogram and trapezoidal.

The embodiment shown in fig. 8 differs from the embodiment shown in fig. 3 in that the number of suction ducts 5 is changed from 6 to 8, so that a more uniformly varying wind field is obtained above the working plane.

Preferably, the wind farm structure further comprises a flow dividing device disposed at the intake manifold 7, for dividing the gas flow of the intake manifold 7, i.e. obtaining different ratios of gas, for example, so that the gas flow entering the first gas flow channel 12 is larger than the gas flow entering the second gas flow channel 13.

A plurality of pipelines of breathing in 5 arrange in the bottom of working chamber 2, and the gas that contains harmful impurity granule in the forming process is taken away from working chamber 2 via the pipeline of breathing in 5 to in the general mouth 8 of giving vent to anger can get into the pipeline of breathing in 11, in order to make gas can circulate and get into working chamber 2, the wind field structure still includes filter equipment, filter equipment sets up in the arbitrary position of pipeline of breathing in 11 (specifically can select suitable position according to the design demand), can make the gas that has harmful impurity granule like this after getting into filter equipment, the harmful impurity granule that it carried can be absorbed by filter equipment, thereby has guaranteed gaseous purity, makes gas can the recirculation.

As shown in fig. 1, the present invention further provides an additive manufacturing apparatus, which includes a working chamber 2, a powder spreading device, a forming cylinder, and the wind field structure of any one of the additive manufacturing apparatuses, wherein a through hole 14 is provided in a central area of a bottom of the working chamber 2, and the forming cylinder performs a lifting motion in the through hole 14 to form an object to be printed on a working plane. It should be noted that, in addition to the above components, the additive manufacturing apparatus also includes many components in the prior art, such as the laser 1, the scanning system, and so on, and since the important protection of the present invention is the wind field structure, the other components of the additive manufacturing apparatus are not described one by one.

Preferably, to facilitate the arrangement of the suction ducts 5, said through holes 14 and the forming cylinder are of matching circular shape, and likewise, the working plane is preferably also circular. Of course, in a specific implementation, it may also be square, as shown in fig. 10, when the through hole 14 and the forming cylinder are square, the number of suction ducts 5 is preferably 4; as shown in fig. 8 and 9, when the through-hole 14 and the forming cylinder are circular, the number of the suction ducts 5 is preferably 4 or more.

Further preferably, in the forming process of additive manufacturing equipment, it is required that the powder paving device pushes the powder raw material to supply the powder raw material back and forth on the working plane, the additive manufacturing equipment further comprises a moving device, and the plurality of air suction pipelines 5 are lifted by the moving device so as to make room for the powder paving device by lifting the plurality of air suction pipelines when the powder paving device performs powder paving work, i.e. the work of the powder paving device is avoided.

The technical features of the above embodiments can be arbitrarily combined, and for the sake of brevity, all possible combinations of the technical features in the above embodiments are not described, but should be considered as the scope of the present specification as long as there is no contradiction between the combinations of the technical features.

The above-mentioned embodiments only express several embodiments of the present application, and the description thereof is more specific and detailed, but not construed as limiting the scope of the invention. It should be noted that, for a person skilled in the art, several variations and modifications can be made without departing from the concept of the present application, which falls within the scope of protection of the present application. Therefore, the protection scope of the present patent shall be subject to the appended claims.

Claims

1. A wind field structure of additive manufacturing equipment is characterized by comprising at least one first air inlet pipeline, two or more second air inlet pipelines, a plurality of air suction pipelines and a fan, the at least one first air inlet duct is disposed in a top central region of a working chamber of the additive manufacturing apparatus, used for inputting the gas output by the fan into the working cavity, two or more than two second air inlet pipelines are arranged around the first air inlet pipeline as the center, used for inputting the gas output by the fan into the working cavity, the plurality of air suction pipelines are arranged at the bottom of the working cavity and are sequentially distributed around the working plane of additive manufacturing, the pipe orifice of the suction pipe for sucking the gas is higher than the working plane so as to form a full-width annular circulating airflow above the working plane.

2. The wind farm structure of additive manufacturing equipment according to claim 1, wherein the nozzles of the suction ducts for sucking in gas are 30-100 mm above the working plane.

3. The wind farm structure of additive manufacturing equipment according to claim 1, wherein the cross section of one end of the air suction pipe in the working chamber is square, the cross section of the other end of the air suction pipe is circular, and the cross section area of the square is larger than that of the circular, so that the air suction pipe is in a special-shaped structure.

4. The wind farm structure of additive manufacturing equipment according to claim 1, wherein the number of the first air intake ducts is one or more, and when the number of the first air intake ducts is plural, the plurality of the first air intake ducts are distributed in a circular or array shape.

5. The wind farm structure of additive manufacturing equipment according to any one of claims 1 to 4, further comprising a gas inlet header port and a gas outlet header port, wherein one end of the gas inlet header port is connected to the fan through a blowing pipeline, the other end of the gas inlet header port is respectively communicated with the first gas inlet pipeline through a first gas flow channel, and is communicated with the second gas inlet pipeline through a second gas flow channel, one end of the gas outlet header port is used for collecting gas sucked by the plurality of suction pipelines, and the other end of the gas outlet header port is connected to the fan through a suction pipeline.

6. The wind farm structure of additive manufacturing equipment according to claim 5, further comprising a flow dividing device disposed at the gas inlet main, for dividing a gas flow at the gas inlet main, and making a gas flow rate entering the first gas flow channel larger than a gas flow rate entering the second gas flow channel.

7. The wind farm structure of additive manufacturing equipment according to claim 6, further comprising a filter device disposed at any location of the air intake duct.

8. An additive manufacturing apparatus, comprising a working chamber, a powder spreading device, a forming cylinder, and the wind field structure of the additive manufacturing apparatus according to any one of claims 1 to 7, wherein a through hole is formed in a central area of the bottom of the working chamber, and the forming cylinder performs lifting movement in the through hole to form a to-be-printed object on a working plane.

9. The additive manufacturing apparatus according to claim 8, further comprising a moving device, wherein the plurality of air suction pipes are moved up and down by the moving device to make room for the powder spreading device by lifting up the plurality of air suction pipes when the powder spreading device performs the powder spreading work.

10. Additive manufacturing apparatus according to claim 8 or 9, wherein the through-hole and the forming cylinder are each matching circular or square.