MSC and Hexagon are leading the additive manufacturing market with our unique combined simulation and test solution

MSC's current offerings for engineers involved in additive manufacturing (AM) of polymers or metals are designed to optimize the 3D printing process in order to:

• reduce production costs,
• increase robustness/reliability and
• improve performance by optimizing design and printing parameters.

Additive Manufacturing (AM) has been successfully applied using both metals and plastics in the aerospace, automotive, bio-medical, tooling, and other applications.

MSC's solution offerings:

-Metal AM

MSC's solution for Metal Additive Manufacturing – Simufact Additive – puts its focus on build simulation and subsequent steps including heat treatment, cutting the base plate, removing supports, and Hot Isostatic Pressing (HIP). The process simulation solution addresses both manufacturers and researchers and their needs.

Simufact Additive helps produce metal AM parts right-first-time in order to save time and money:

• Shorten your learning process dramatically
• Run more variations prior to the production
• Shorten time-to-market
• Increase machine/manpower availability and productivity
• Reduce material and energy consumption costs

Simufact Additive is the leading simulation package for metal build process optimization concerning speed, accuracy, functionality, and usability. The software comes with a workflow-oriented user interface, which customers report as the best-in-class GUI.

The solutions' functionality helps you to answer urgent challenges in the build process while providing higher efficiency by automation and assistant functionality:

• Identify the best build orientation
• Determine and compensate final part distortion automatically
• Generate and optimize support structures automatically
• Use Materialise® support generation functionality
• Identify manufacturing issues such as cracks, layer offsets, recoater contact
• Predict the influence of several components in the build space
• Identify cold and hot spots due to thermal/thermo-mechanical simulation
• Examine conditions of highly elevated temperatures and pressures - HIP process

Simufact Additive is ready for High Performance Computing based on Linux clusters.

Polymer & Composite AM

Digimat Additive Manufacturing Solution addresses the industry need to "print right the first time" and constitutes the corner stone of the first simulation chain of additive manufacturing with a unique combination of material engineering, process simulation and structural engineering to address standard AM problems:

• What material is available?
• Will it be accurately printed? Will it fail? Will it warp? What is the best building orientation?
• What is the expected material behavior and mechanical performance? How anisotropic?

Our objective is to accelerate the adoption of the AM technology as production technique by providing AM-focus predictive simulation tools that replicate the standard engineering workflow:

• Gain efficiency: provide a unique simulation platform with off-the-shelf material & printers models
• Save material: anticipate printing issue with process simulation and compensate distortion
• Save time: optimize the process among the large numbers of setup parameters
• Build knowledge: understand the key parameters driving material & process behavior
• Reduce physical productions & testing: predict parts' performance as a function of material & process
• Tailored Engineering Services to help you supporting your technology transition
• Help developing, exchanging and using a larger portfolio of composites materials specifically for additive manufacturing
• A faster material development by virtually exploring, testing and validating new composites
• Benefit e-Xstream's expertise in multiscale composite materials modeling with reinforced materials & advanced material models

Optimize quality control on Additive Manufacturing processes and parameters with a next-generation material lifecycle management system

• From raw material to the finished part, capture all manufacturing inputs, both virtual and physical.
• Virtually and quickly search across thousands of machine and process parameters in order to find desired optimal properties.
• Leverage comparison tools, such as material compare and cross plot, in order to optimize machine and process parameters to product consistent and reliable components.

MSC vision for the Future of Additive Manufacturing

MSC's vision for the future is to provide a complete AM toolkit that helps companies to optimize their entire AM process chain - including CAE, selection of raw material, manufacturing, and quality assurance.

Some of the challenges that currently exist in this space include ill-defined and poorly tracked process parameters, which leads to engineers running several print jobs against several parameters. This in turn leads to longer process development time, high amounts of material waste, and time wasted on printing parts that are unfit for service.

Related Products: 

• DigimatThe Nonlinear Multi-scale Material and Structure Modeling Platform
• Simufact AdditiveA Simulation Tool for Distortion Prediction in Powder Bed Additive Manufacturing