Siemens Digital Industries Software is expanding its additive manufacturing capabilities with the acquisition of Atlas 3D, a Plymouth based company, Indiana, specialized in the development of software solutions for ‘right first time’ 3D printing in direct metal laser sintering.
Atlas 3D’s Sunata software uses thermal distortion analysis to easily and automatically determine the optimal part build orientation and generate support structures. This approach allows the designer, rather than the analyst, to perform these simulations, thereby reducing the downstream analysis that needs to be conducted via Simcenter software to achieve a part that meets design requirements.
The cloud-based GPU (graphics processing unit)-accelerated Sunata software reduces downstream 3D printing errors caused for example by thermal distortion up to 100 times faster than comparable systems. GPU-accelerated computing is the employment of a graphics processing unit (GPU) along with a computer processing unit (CPU) to facilitate processing-intensive operations such as deep learning, analytics and engineering applications.
The combination of Sunata with the robust CAE additive manufacturing tools in Simcenter thus enables to industrialize additive manufacturing for high-volume production in large enterprises. Siemens plans to make the Atlas 3D solution available through its online Additive Manufacturing Network.