NX Now Offers Additive Manufacturing Solutions

The company welcomed more participants to this year's user meeting of Siemens PLM Software: More than 1100 users from 32 countries traveled to Berlin for the three-day conference to find out about the latest trends and solutions in more than 160 sessions.

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Digitization changes everything

Tony Hemmelgarn, who was appointed CEO of Siemens PLM Software on October 1st, welcomed the participants with his vision of how technical developments change the way products are created, manufactured and developed. The drivers behind this include generative design, intelligent models, methods of machine learning, additive manufacturing and the cloud. The development is currently characterized by disruptive techniques. Siemens PLM Software offers a universal solution for this process chain of ideation, implementation and utilization. The solutions from CD-Adapco complement the portfolio with further simulation options, some of which have already been incorporated into the new Simcenter 3D platform. So the idea of ​​the digital twin,who realizes a real product from the beginning over the entire life cycle. In this way, Siemens PLM Software wants to support its customers with the challenges posed by the increasing complexity of today's products.

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Analysis tool bundles simulation and verification of complex design solutions

Thanks to the acquisition of Polarion in early 2016, an application lifecycle management solution, which will be integrated in Teamcenter, is now in the Siemens PLM Software portfolio. As far as the language of the products is concerned, Mindsphere comes into play: In the Siemens Cloud for Industry, physical products and production systems are interlinked with digital data.

NX and the additive manufacturing processes

To really take advantage of the promising advantages of additive manufacturing processes and bring them to the reality of industrial manufacturing, Siemens is setting up an end-to-end process with a set of integrated tools. So version 11 of the NX was equipped with some new functions; in version 11.0.1 more are to follow. The new modeling technology, for example, enables the combination of different formats: With convergent modeling, volumes, surfaces and facet models, for example triangles from STL files, can be combined. "Reverse engineering is no longer required, because data from different sources can now be easily combined and processed as a model," explained Paul Brown, Senior Marketing Director, Design Product Marketing, Siemens PLM Software.

In a live presentation, the participants were shown how a form is built and optimized from the topology optimization now integrated in NX. The original and the optimized form were then simulated and compared in Simcenter. The locations that can be filled with lattice structures, for example with regard to lightweight construction, can also be defined in the simulation.

3D CAD software

NX from Siemens now relies on convergent modeling

Design rules for additive manufacturing

Andreas Saar, Vice President Manufacturing Engineering Solutions at Siemens PLM Software, finally presented the actual novelty: "Siemens now offers an integrated system from development to additive manufacturing, which we implement together with a large ecosystem of partners." Additive Manufacturing Solution for NX11 offers a whole range of “Design for Manufacturability” checks, which, depending on the printing process, identify potential sources of error. For example, the wall thickness of thin-walled parts that are to be manufactured on an FDM printer must be adapted to the nozzle diameter of the printer; Areas that the printing process does not allow are automatically displayed in the check routine.

In the powder process, for example, it must be considered to create a way to get the excess powder out of the interior.

Prepare models precisely for printing

The user can supply easily accessible printers such as FDM machines with data from NX. However, some printers require more control, such as DMG Mori's hybrid machines, which work both additively and subtractively, or laser sintering machines. With the laser sintering machines, various problems can arise in connection with the punctiform heat input of the laser. Thanks to CD-Adapco technology, this heat input at the level of the powder grain structure and also the melting behavior can be simulated, thus increasing the reliability of the process. The distribution of melting points over the entire surface of the component for a better distribution of the heat input can also be simulated.

Another helpful function in NX 11 is that the component is automatically positioned in the available space according to the parameters of the printer. In addition, the system generates the support structures so that when the CAD model is changed, only the new part has to be loaded; the support structures adapt accordingly.

Partners in the Siemens PLM Software ecosystem are Stratasys, DMG Mori and Hewlett Packard. Hewlett Packard's powder bed and multi-fusion jet process options should be available in early 2017. Hybrid additive manufacturing is already possible today, FDM is currently in the field test.