3D print failures can be a key challenge for companies leveraging additive manufacturing for high-volume production. Parts often need to go through several design and analysis iterations before the optimal build orientation and support structures are found. Often, designers don’t have the tools to consider such factors as part orientation, distortion, and heat extraction uniformity in their design. This puts the onus on engineering specialists to resolve such issues.

The Siemens acquisition of Atlas 3D, Inc., a Plymouth, Indiana-based developer of software that works with direct metal laser sintering (DMLS) printers, may provide a solution. The software automatically configures the optimal print orientation and requisite support structures for additive parts in near real-time. Atlas 3D will join Siemens Digital Industries Software, where its solutions will expand additive manufacturing capabilities in the Xcelerator portfolio of software.

Atlas 3D’s software solves the problem of part failure by giving front-end designers a quick, easy and automated way to get much closer to a “right first time” build. Sunata is a GPU-accelerated high-performance computing additive manufacturing software solution that can deliver results up to one hundred times faster than other build simulation solutions on the market. GPU-accelerated computing is the employment of a graphics processing unit (GPU) along with a computer processing unit (CPU) to facilitate processing-intensive operations such as deep learning, analytics and engineering applications.

Sunata software uses thermal distortion analysis to provide a simple, automated way to optimize part build orientation and generate support structures. This approach allows the designer—rather than the analyst—to perform these simulations, reducing the downstream analysis that needs to be conducted with Simcenter software to achieve a part that meets design requirements. Siemens plans to make the Atlas 3D solution available through its online Additive Manufacturing Network.

The acquisition is due to close in November 2019. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

Siemens Digital Industries Software
www.sw.siemens.com