Digital assembly and direct fabrication of mechanism based on selective laser melting

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to obtain more design freedom and realize fast fabrication of mechanism which is the core subsystem of many machines and always consists of several parts with assigned relative motion. Design/methodology/approach - The mechanism is digitally assembled and later directly fabricated by selective laser melting (SLM) without post-assembly. The joint is re-designed to facilitate powdered material removal; the displays and the corresponding support additions are discussed to avoid too many supports within the clearances. Then, a series of universal joint are directly fabricated using SLM machine and a minimum clearance of 0.1 mm is obtained; a crank rocker mechanism is also fabricated and it can achieve the required performances. Findings - The digitally assembled mechanism can be successfully fabricated by SLM technique using metal powdered material. Originality/value - It is well known that the components fabricated by SLM have good mechanical properties. Therefore, it can be expected that more mechanisms with more design freedom will be developed and be used in some practical fields with improvement of fabrication quality.