Concepts for integrating laser polishing into an additive manufacturing system

Abstract

With the introduction of Additive Manufacturing, many industrial sectors benefit from the freedom of design and capabilities of this technology. Components can be individually designed and extended with different functions. However, high effort in the post-processing is necessary, since surfaces have to be processed and support structures have to be removed. This post-processing usually takes place outside the Additive Manufacturing machine. Therefore an additional effort is necessary for the machining process, but also for pre- and post-processing of the components. For example, positioning in a CNC milling machine has to be done. It is not feasible to fabricate complete systems consisting of multiple components in a single manufacturing operation. Especially optical systems require high surface qualities. The surfaces usually have to be milled or polished. In order to install the optical system afterwards, an enormous adjustment and assembly effort is needed. This can be bypassed, when both optics and mechanics are manufactured during the same process. However, integrating subtractive post-processing should be avoided as it may cause contaminants that cannot be removed from the system. Transformative processes like laser polishing do barely cause contaminants and are more suited for parallel processing. In this work the integration of a laser polishing system is evaluated, which can be used to reduce surface roughness. The requirements for the light source, manufacturing accuracy, etc. are clarified and concepts, how the integration can be implemented are developed. In addition, possibilities for processing additional materials to manufacture optical systems in one machine are discussed. © COPYRIGHT SPIE. Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.