Markt- und Trendanalyse Laserstrahlschmelzen 2010

Abstract

It’s not only the manifold function-related demands made to products and components, but above all today’s mar-ket requirements that pose great challenges to current manufacturing technologies. Continuously increasing pro-liferation of options countered by decreasing lot sizes per variant reflects differentiated customer requests. These developments abet the prospect of laser melting in general, as well as its special application areas rapid prototyp-ing, rapid tooling and rapid manufacturing. In the industrial sectors medical technology and rubber and plastics processing dynamic developments have been visible for some time already. Especially in medical technology, an increasingly broad application of laser melting is driven by the great innovative ability of the method and im-proved quality management. Due to increasing demands for individualized and individual products patient specific implants are already being laser melted today. Do market participants expect inquiries for such products to keep increasing? How does the method have to be improved in order to increase process stability? What are future challenges to the laser melting technology? In order to answer these and further questions, the Fraunhofer-Institute for Production Systems and Design Technol-ogy IPK has conducted a market and trend analysis about laser melting.