Additive Manufacturing for Metal Lattice Structures in Aerospace

Metal lattice structure has been widely used in the design and production of medical implants, and has received very positive feedback. Metal lattice structure also has a wide application in aerospace industry. Its advantages includes high mechanical properties, high specific strength, good energy absorption capacity and strong thermal characteristics. Metal lattice structure generally show better performance and characteristics in terms of specific strength and energy absorption than conventional structures. Metal lattice structures printed by additive manufacturing has excellent performance components and precise control characteristics.

Another advantage of additive manufacturing for metal lattice structure is that the product can be very lightweight. Because replacing solid structure with lattice structure can greatly reduce weight and the consumption of materials, more cost will be saved.

Lattice structure(material: titanium alloy) printed by EP-M300

Although metal lattice structure which printed by additive manufacturing allows the design with light, heat, acoustics and energy absorption properties, manufacturing parameters still needs to be improved to reduce common problems, such as pillar microporous, surface roughness and probability of bad mechanical properties. The manufacturing error and the integral effect of the honeycomb geometry affects the fatigue performance of the structure, which is the key to their application in aerospace.

There is still a lot of room for improvement for the application of metal lattice structures in aerospace industry, and Eplus3D is very willing to discuss further. Welcome to contact Eplus3D for more details about the application of metal lattice structures in aerospace industry.