Ansys Additive Print - Getting Started

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Ansys Additive Print- Getting started Hi everybody, this is Edwin Rodriguez from Ozen Engineering Inc. and today I am going to show you this first tutorial in additive printing, which is the tool that allows us to create different additive print simulations inside the Ansys suite.

First of all, we want to print this geometry I have here in Discovery. We need to start from an STL geometry exported in millimeters. This is important because the additive tool needs the dimensions to be in millimeters. This is our simple example geometry and this is the cap we want to print today.

Okay, we are working in this window, which is the Ansys Additive Print tool, and we can see there are several options. We have this tab, which is called Dashboard. This is the place where we are going to create and manage simulations. We have draft simulations, which are prepared but not solved.

We have the running simulation, the current simulation running, and completed simulations. In this case, all the lists are empty because I haven't created any simulation yet. We also have the Parts tab.

This is the place where we can upload any part or any STL file we want to include in our simulations. And we have also Build Files, which is a specific format including machine information. And we have the Materials, where we can also manage our material to be printed.

Now, in the Dashboard, we are going to create a new simulation. The first task we need to do before creating any simulation is to include the part file into our additive print suite. That's why we need to go to Parts and then Import a Part. Now we can select a file.

In this case, I'm going to use this one. That should be an STL in millimeters. And now I have the part uploaded. I need to provide a name and some tags to easily identify this part in the future.

For example, we can say this is a cover, and we can give some tags, for example, we can call it example, and some level of description, like curved cap. All this information will allow us to identify the part more easily in the future. I'm going to hit Save. And now the part is loaded.

Okay, now we have our part loaded. It's the same as we saw in Discovery. I can, with my mouse buttons, rotate and zoom the part in order to be sure this is properly imported. We can see here a floor or a base plate, which represents actually the base plate on the machine.

That means every printing we are going to do here will be done in the Z axis. The base plate will always be the XY plane, and the height direction will be the Z axis. Ok, we can see our cover, which is rotated in an angle with the horizontal.

This is not completely flat with the base plate, and this is the way we are going to define our STL file. I mean, depending on how we create our original file, that will be also the printing orientation. That depends on how you create the STL file, in the same way you are going to print the part.

You always print in the vertical direction, that's why that will be printed in this rotated orientation. We can also see the details we created, the status, which is available now, the date. Now we can create; we can include a title here, for example, Cover Sim, and we can add some tags.

I can add example as a tag, and I need to include a description. This is not mandatory, but I can do it. First simulation, and I can define the number of cores; in this example, that will be 12, which is good enough for my convenience.

And the next part is the geometry selection; I can add the part I have already uploaded into my application. In this case, I want to print the cover part, which is just added, and I can see the part here again. I can rotate it; I can be sure this is the part I want to print.

Now I can define several parameters that are defining the printing process. The first of all is the voxel size. The voxel size inside the simulation; exahedral elements will be created in order to simulate this geometry. And the size of these exahedral elements is the voxel size.

By default, we can use this 0.5 mm, and that will be enough for our simulation. If we change this value, for example, 0.1, we can see how the estimated memory usage is increased; that will require more resources, and that's why we are going to keep this voxel size, 0.5 mm.

We can be sure, for example, through the thickness, to have at least 3 or 4 elements or 4 voxels to have a good simulation. Inside each voxel, we are going to make subdivisions in order to reproduce the non-cubical geometry. In that way, we need to use, or to define, this voxel sample rate.

In this case, if we use 5, that means each hexa site will be split in 5 segments, meaning each voxel will contain 125 subvoxels, that will allow to represent this curved surface we have, for example, in our geometry.

We can let this value in file, which is good, and we can continue defining our simulation. Okay, now we are going to define our supports. We can simulate with or without supports. In this case, because my part doesn't have supports included, I need to include them in the simulation.

That's why I'm going to keep this option activated, which is simulate with supports. And I can select between different options. For example, I can upload an STL file specific for their support, or I can use this automatic option, which is the one I want to use in this case.

That means the solver will include the supports depending on the parameters I am defining here. I also have this minimum overhang angle. This one indicates the minimum angle between the base plate and my part that will include a support.

Meaning, for example, if 90 degrees will include supports everywhere, you know, even in the vertical walls. If I have a zero angle, I will only include support between horizontal surfaces and the base plates.

That's why 45, in this case, could be a good measure, and we are going to have this value for this simulation. The other value we have here is the minimum support height. This value indicates the minimum height the support will have at any location.

Meaning, for example, if my STL file is located at C equals to zero, it will be moved 5 millimeters to the top to allow at least 5 millimeters as the support. We also have the next option, which is the generate optimized supports.

Ansys support is not only creating supports but also including an optimized shape for the support generated for my part. In this case, I have different parameters to include too. Let's see, for example, this one, which is called Support Factor of Safety.

This one means the strength of the optimized support structure.

When we create the supports within the program, we can see like a grid, you know, having holes and having solid parts, and this factor of safety indicates how dense will be that grid, depending on the strength of the material we are using to print.

In that case, having a value larger than 1 will suppose a stronger support, and a value lower than 1 will suppose a weaker support. We can also include these additional values, which are, for example, the volumeless and solid support parameters.

In the case we are generating voluminous support, I mean like some kind of surface, we can define the wall thickness for that surface, and the maximum wall distance, which is the distance between one support and the next in our structure.

The same from solid support parameters, we also said that the support is like a grid; we can define this thickness for that grid, for example, the minimum and maximum thickness, and the minimum being like the one laser beam pass, you know.

Doing that, we can define the minimum, and the maximum, depending on what we want, and the wall distance, which is the same as before. Okay, having that defined, we need to add a material for our printing. In this case, we are going to use one material from the list. We need to choose one.

In this case, I want to use this TI64 for my simulation, that will be automatically loaded with all these numerical values and the mechanical properties.

We see the typical properties of the material, the mode of stress, which can be linear elastic or plasticity, depending on how we want to perform our simulation. We have the elastic modulus, the portion ratio, the yield strength.

The support yield strength ratio is the value we are going to use to scale the stress that will be applied in our supports during the support generation. And we can calibrate this value depending on experiments and simulations. We can find a uniform value to be applied for our quick simulations.

Finally, we go to the Outputs selection section, which is the latest one in our setup, where we can find we have this first option always activated. This is the on-plate residual stress distortion.

We can evaluate here the residual stress and the distortion of the part while it is still on the plate. And we can also include more information. We also have; we are going to activate this distortion compensated STL file.

This is an important file because this file will include the final distortion and will be taken backwards to our geometry, and we will have a compensated geometry that intends to be the initial geometry to print to have the final desired geometry.

Having this file, we can perform a second simulation run in order to be sure the final geometry will match with our ideal geometry final part. We are going to also activate this displacement after cutoff option, which is the...

We are going to calculate how the part will see stresses and distortion after being removed from the plate. And we are going to use this by default options. We can also include the potential for the part to have crash with the blade.

In this case, this is the tech potential blade crash due to distortion, because when the blade moves back and forward. And we can also create a threshold, which will act like some kind of safety factor, in order to find the probability to crash the blade and the part when it's being printed.

Okay, with all this information, we can now save our setup, hitting this button, and we can see now the simulation has been saved. From this page, we can run the simulation using the start button, or we can go back to the dashboard, where we have the cover sim.

We can go back and forth, and in this case, I am going to just hit the start button and start the simulation. Now we can see how different steps are being performed to create our simulation. We can see the different activities, the voxelization, the solver, the support optimization, and so on.

We can see here all the parameters we are using, the part name, the material, and all the like a summary of our simulation. Our simulation is already finished, and we can go to the output file section in this corner, and we can see there are several options to visualize.

In this case, we are going to export some of those files, and we are going to process it using the Ansys viewer software. Now we are going to save three different files. We are going to save the solver voxel input, which is this one, and I'm going to hit export. And I am going to save this AVZ file.

Okay, and then the on-plate stress displacement, same location, and after cutoff displacement. I can also view the other files too. And I'm going to open the Ansys viewer in order to visualize those files. Now I'm opening the Ansys viewer, and I have this screen here.

I can maximize it and load the files I just downloaded. Then I can go to this open button, and I'm going to load all three of them simultaneously, and I'm going to hit the open button. Okay, now I can see one of them, and I'm going to split my window in four sections.

And I can organize my different views. Hitting these three buttons, I can load each file in the corner I want. In the first one, I want to change the file, and I'm going to use the OnPlate stress displacement. In the second window, I'm going to do the same, and I'm going to load the same file.

That means I am looking at the same results file in both windows. For the third one, I am going to select the after cutoff, and finally, in the last one, I am going to see the voxels. Okay, now I can visualize simultaneously four results, but I have twice the same visualization.

I can modify in order to see different results from the same file. In the Windows 2, instead of seeing the displacement, which is the one I am visualizing here, I can select, instead of displacement, I can select von Mises, for example.

And now I am looking into a different result, which is pretty interesting for our analysis. Okay, now I can evaluate these results.

I can see in the top how the part, which is on plate, I'm going to move this a little bit, because this one is on plate, I can see the displacement magnitude compared with the magnitude after cutoff, which is the one below.

We can see this is 2.05, and this is 1.84, you know, it's different, and the distribution is also different. We can also see how the part has been printed, and we can see the voxels at the different locations.

And we can identify the region of maximum displacement, depending on how the part has been printed. And after removing the part from the base plate, we can see a different distribution of displacement in the same part.

On plate, we can see here the Von Mises stress, which is evaluated around the part, and we can identify critical locations, for example, this one, where we can see the maximum values.

And finally, we can see the voxel, where we can easily identify the support, which has been generated because of the setup we made.

We can see there are different phases, some of them have been used to generate supports because of the angle we defined, you know, and some of the surfaces have an angle larger than 45 degrees, and that's why we don't have any surface located at that location.

And in the regions where we have the angle criteria, we can see the support has been created. Okay, this is all for this quick tutorial. I hope that will be interesting for you, and see you in the next time. Thank you for watching.

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