On the latest episode of our video series, “AM: Why the Failure?”, Penn State professor of additive manufacturing Tim Simpson and I discuss a stainless steel component related to oil and gas extraction that was made through laser powder bed fusion. For weight reduction, the component’s inner volume consists of a lattice structure. However, the build produced a barrier through the lattice and through the part that appears nowhere in the original CAD model. This barrier might have resulted in complete failure by cutting off the passages necessary for fluid flow, but fortunately, the feature appeared near enough to one end of the part that a drill could still reach it and open it up.

What happened here? As Tim and I discuss, the cause of this error relates to a power failure and subsequent restart of the build. He makes the case for an uninterruptible power supply, an investment that may pay for itself after saving just a few additive builds. However, most of those who made guesses in social media instead suspected a problem in CAD modeling, likely related the use of the STL geometry format. STL is a common file format for additive manufacturing — it has its challenges and it even produced a different, unrelated challenge in producing this part, so Tim and I also get into a discussion of STL and its alternatives.

This episode brought to you by Verisurf. https://www.verisurf.com/  

Related resources:

- LinkedIn post about this part, with many guesses: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/...

- Surface defects resulting from STL modeling: https://www.additivemanufacturing.med...

- Case study - uninterruptible power supply: https://www.additivemanufacturing.med...

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