Boostedbird23 t1_j8os4zu wrote on February 15, 2023 at 9:38 PM

Reply to comment by [deleted] in NASA's "evolved structures" radically reduce weight – and waiting by Maxcactus

Voids are expected in castings, especially steel castings. We do our best to design the tooling to minimize it. However, we also factor those expected defects into the (derating fatigue, for example) material properties when we do our FEA analysis. It seems like these 3D printed designs would be no different.

bohemica_ t1_j8qvr5t wrote on February 16, 2023 at 8:22 AM

Glad we have FEA, additive manufacturing really wouldn’t be easy to implement without it. I say this because AM is still a rather under-standardised field and will probably remain that way for a while, at least process-wise. Of course you have a general idea of what happens when you change parameters or object geometry, but without simulating things on a case by case basis, no way you would be able to produce a reliable part.