dc.description.abstract | Additive manufacturing (AM) has been booming in recent years, and it can be regarded as the key technology in the third industrial revolution. Among which, PBF (Powder Bed Fusion) and DED (Directed Energy Deposition) technologies that can be applied to metal parts production are particularly attracting attention in the case that mechanical properties are of high importance. But the cost is still an obstacle to the popularity of additive manufacturing. The metal powder used in AM process is an important factor results in difficult cost-down of AM due to the expensive equipment, high powder quality requirements, difficult production procedure, and then comes the extremely high powder price as a results. On the other hand, the metal PBF process tends easy to waste powder. For the purpose of cutting costs, reducing powder consumption by recycling the powder that was directly discarded in the original manufacturing process has become a high potential technique worthy of researches in innovation.
The previous researches [1,2] completed the development of automated powder recovery system equipment, including four subsystems, pneumatic conveying, powder supply, powder screening, and human-machine interface. Besides that, there still needs powder processing equipment to be added into the system to accomplish a complete powder recovery system that capable to recycle powder back to the AM machine. The new powder processing equipment here is the mixer and the powder conveying equipment connecting equipment together in series. The current research focuses on the integration and link all units of the powder recovery system that can work smoothly together in the additive manufacturing system.
While in the execution of design work, a block flow chart and process flow chart were made firstly. Then the operation units, controlling instrument, valves are put into process flow chart to form the piping and instrumentation diagram required for the process. After choosing the equipment and arrange the processing sequence, alarm system for this powder recycling system, then valves operation sequence diagram can be made. After confirming these objects, the engineering drawing and electrical drawing can be made. The performance of the mixer can be simulated with different air inlet angles, height, latent distance from symmetric plane, and the operation air inlet speed as parameters to get the optimized structure and operation condition of the mixer.
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