Research On The Support-Free Forming Method Of Inner Runner Based On Laser Cladding

Additive manufacturing,as an important supplement to traditional manufacturing methods,has developed fast in recent years and is now increasingly used in manufacturing.One problem in additive manufacturing is that a single-direction additive forming requires a support structure to be manufactured in a large overhang area,but the manufacturing of the support structure wastes time and materials,and the support removal is troublesome.As a typical structure,the inner runner structure has applied in many fields.It also has the above-mentioned problems.Although scholars all over the world have conducted many studies on support-free additive manufacturing,there is currently no research on support-free forming method for inner runner.This topic proposes a support-free forming method based on the inner runner structure,establishes its mathematical process,and uses Python and VTK(Visualization Toolkit)to make the algorithm process processing results visualized.Finally,the relationship between the input and output of the algorithm are analyzed and the influence of parameters on output results is obtained.The correctness and effectiveness of the algorithm program are proved by the application of the algorithm to the inner runner model.The first is the establishment of the support-free forming method.For the inner runner structure,the model is divided by solving the vertical plane of the inner runner pipeline from bottom to top,and the model is divided along the plane in the opposite solution order to obtain a series of non-interference sub-model which can be formed along a single direction without support.The solution of the segment plane includes the solution of the position point and the normal direction.The position point is determined according to the inclination of the surface of the inner runner to the construction direction.The normal direction approximates the actual pipeline direction through convergence iteration.The second is the realization of the algorithm of the support-free forming method.The entire mathematical process is realized by the algorithm program that organized by Python.The program can output information about all segmentation planes after setting the input parameters.The Python interface of the VTK is used to visualize the model segmentation results.The last is the analysis and test of the algorithm program.The influence of each input parameter of the algorithm program on the output is investigated through variable-controlling.The relationship between the output and each parameter is obtained through analysis.The correctness and effectiveness of the method are proved through applied the algorithm in inner runner model.The results show that the support-free forming method proposed can correctly segment the model into multiple non-interference sub-models.The appearance of large overhangs in inner runner can be avoided and support-free forming of inner structure can be realized.