LIGHT – Inspiring new design freedoms and LIGHTweight solutions for metal additive manufacturing

This project will inspire new design freedoms for Metal Additive Manufacturing (MAM), in particular Selective Laser Melting (SLM), to create advanced lightweight structures and products. A major constraint of MAM is the requirement of support structures for building overhanging geometries. This will be overcome by an innovative CAD/CAM solution which utilises smart “self-support” low-density lattice structures (down to 5% volume fraction) to efficiently support internal and external overhanging geometries of lightweight products. Furthermore, an end-to-end manufacturing simulation and rehearsal tool will be developed to predict the manufacturability and performance of lightweight products and stimulate design freedom and optimisation which can reduce material and production costs for MAM. The aim of this project is to enable the UK automotive, aerospace and engineering sectors to more effectively exploit MAM technologies.