Decision support for repair with DED AM processes based on sustainability and techno-economical evaluation
Nikolas Porevopoulos, Konstantinos Tzimanis, Thanassis Souflas, Harry Bikas, Vasiliki C. Panagiotopoulou, Panagiotis Stavropoulos
Abstract
Metal Additive Manufacturing (AM) processes are being adopted from industry, for both repair and manufacturing services, however, there are few guidelines and metrics that quantitatively dictate if the best approach is to repair or manufacture a part from scratch. Therefore, this work presents a decision support framework that considers design limitations, sustainability and techno-economical metrics for the feasibility study of a repair process with Directed Energy Deposition (DED) process. The produced environmental footprint during the deposition process and the post and pre-processing with conventional methods as well as during the manufacturing from scratch with conventional methods are studied separately. Finally, the decision support workflow is validated in the repair process of shafts that are operating in vessels and they are made from stainless steel AISI 316L however this study considers also an alternative of titanium Ti-6Al4-V6 as working material. The repair process is conducted in a wire laser-based DED process (DED-LB/M), extracting limitations from the machine and process side while also the effect of part size and material selection on the decision-making Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) is demonstrated.