Direct photonic production: towards high speed additive manufacturing of individualized goods

World market competition currently boosts trends like mass customization and open innovation which result in a demand for highly individualized products at costs matching or beating those of mass production. This work focus on the resolution of the production related dilemma between scale and scope, e.g. either the low-cost production of high quantities or the high-end and thus cost-intensive low-volume production of individualized goods. One of the areas of greatest potential for the resolution of this dilemma are rapid manufacturing (RM) technologies due to their almost infinite geometrical variability and freedom of design without the need for part-specific tooling. Selective Laser Melting (SLM) is one of the RM technologies that additionally provides series identical mechanical properties without the need for downstream sintering processes, etc. However, the state-of-the-art process and cost efficiency is not yet suited for series production. In order to improve this efficiency and enable SLM to enter series production it is indispensable to increase the build rate significantly by means of increased laser power and larger beam diameters. To exploit this potential, a new generation production machine including a kW laser and an optical multi-beam system is developed and experimental results and real life components are shown.