Effect of after fabrication cooling cycles in geometric and dimensioning accuracy of products in selective laser sintering process

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The industrial partner of the current proposal, Anubis Manufacturing Consulting, is a leading company providing additive manufacturing services in Ontario. Anubis is a Manufacturing company capable in providing high precision additive manufacturing products to a variety of industries including automotive industries, dies and tools manufacturer, automation and robotics, etc. Anubis uses a state-of-the art Selective Laser Sintering (SLS) process to produce complex parts with a high level of precision. Typically, a significant portion of the production lead-time in SLS process is taken by two cooling cycles of the finished products that needs to be conducted right after the fabrication process. After parts have been produced via the SLS process, they require the two phases of cooling cycles in which the parts may set. Phase 1 is performed within the insulated machine in warm conditions; Phase 2 is performed outside the machine in ambient conditions. Commonly, conducting the full cooling cycles requires a great deal of downtime and energy inefficiency on the machines and increases the batch production time. The objective of this project is to reduce the overall production lead time and also improve the efficiency of the production and actual machines' operational time. Reducing the cooling cycle time without losing the geometric and dimensional accuracies of the final products is the selected approach to achieve the above mentioned objectives.