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Research and implementation of large-area sintering technology based on image-shaped laser

Yifan Guo (Department of Mechanical and Electronic Engineering, College of Mechatronics Engineering, Northeast Forestry University, Harbin, China)
Yanling Guo (Department of Mechanical and Electronic Engineering, College of Mechatronics Engineering, Northeast Forestry University, Harbin, China)
Jian Li (Department of Mechanical and Electronic Engineering, College of Mechatronics Engineering, Northeast Forestry University, Harbin, China)
Yangwei Wang (Department of Mechanical and Electronic Engineering, College of Mechatronics Engineering, Northeast Forestry University, Harbin, China)
Deyu Meng (Department of Mechanical and Electronic Engineering, College of Mechatronics Engineering, Northeast Forestry University, Harbin, China)
Haoyu Zhang (Department of Mechanical and Electronic Engineering, College of Mechatronics Engineering, Northeast Forestry University, Harbin, China)
Jiaming Dai (Department of Mechanical and Electronic Engineering, College of Mechatronics Engineering, Northeast Forestry University, Harbin, China)

Rapid Prototyping Journal

ISSN: 1355-2546

Article publication date: 19 April 2024

Issue publication date: 1 May 2024

20

Abstract

Purpose

Selective laser sintering (SLS) is an essential technology in the field of additive manufacturing. However, SLS technology is limited by the traditional point-laser sintering method and has reached the bottleneck of efficiency improvement. This study aims to develop an image-shaped laser sintering (ISLS) system based on a digital micromirror device (DMD) to address this problem. The ISLS system uses an image-shaped laser light source with a size of 16 mm × 25.6 mm instead of the traditional SLS point-laser light source.

Design/methodology/approach

The ISLS system achieves large-area image-shaped sintering of polymer powder materials by moving the laser light source continuously in the x-direction and updating the sintering pattern synchronously, as well as by overlapping the splicing of adjacent sintering areas in the y-direction. A low-cost composite powder suitable for the ISLS system was prepared using polyether sulfone (PES), pinewood and carbon black (CB) powders as raw materials. Large-sized samples were fabricated using composite powder, and the microstructure, dimensional accuracy, geometric deviation, density, mechanical properties and feasible feature sizes were evaluated.

Findings

The experimental results demonstrate that the ISLS system is feasible and can print large-sized parts with good dimensional accuracy, acceptable geometric deviations, specific small-scale features and certain density and mechanical properties.

Originality/value

This study has achieved the transition from traditional point sintering mode to image-shaped surface sintering mode. It has provided a new approach to enhance the system performance of traditional SLS.

Keywords

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant number 52075090) and the Key R&D Program of Heilongjiang Province (GA21A403).

Citation

Guo, Y., Guo, Y., Li, J., Wang, Y., Meng, D., Zhang, H. and Dai, J. (2024), "Research and implementation of large-area sintering technology based on image-shaped laser", Rapid Prototyping Journal, Vol. 30 No. 4, pp. 811-821. https://doi.org/10.1108/RPJ-11-2023-0408

Publisher

:

Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2024, Emerald Publishing Limited

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