Open Access

Stefan Junk, Henning Einloth

• Additive manufacturing (AM) and in particular the application of 3D multi material printing offers completely new production technologies thanks to the degree of freedom in design and the simultaneous processing of several materials in one component. Today's CAD systems for product development are volume-based and therefore cannot adequately implement the multi-material approach. Voxel-based CADAdditive manufacturing (AM) and in particular the application of 3D multi material printing offers completely new production technologies thanks to the degree of freedom in design and the simultaneous processing of several materials in one component. Today's CAD systems for product development are volume-based and therefore cannot adequately implement the multi-material approach. Voxel-based CAD systems offer the advantage that a component can be divided into many voxels and different materials and functions can be assigned to these voxels. In this contribution two voxel-based CAD systems will be analyzed in order to simplify the AM on voxel level with different materials. Thus, a number of suitable criteria for evaluating voxel-based CAD systems are being developed and applied. The results of a technical-economic comparison show the differences between the voxel-based systems and disclose their disadvantages compared to conventional CAD systems. In order to overcome these disadvantages, a new method is therefore presented as an approach that enables the voxelization of a component in a simple way based on a conventional CAD model. The process chain of this new method is demonstrated using a typical component from product design. The results of this implementation of the new method are illustrated and analyzed.…