Nikita Letov

Nikita Letov, Yaoyao Fiona Zhao

Geometric modelling has been a crucial component of the design process ever since the introduction of the first Computer-Aided Design (CAD) systems. Additive Manufacturing (AM) pushes design freedom to previously unachievable limits. AM allows the manufacturing of lattice structures which are otherwise close to impossible to be manufactured conventionally. Yet, the geometric modelling of heterogeneous lattice structures is still greatly limited. Thus, the AM industry is now in a situation where the manufacturing capabilities exceed the geometric modelling capabilities. While there have been advancements in the modelling of heterogeneous lattice structures, the review of relevant literature revealed critical limitations of the existing approaches. These limitations include their inability to model non-linear variation of geometric parameters, as well as the limited amount of controllable geometric parameters. This work presents a novel geometric modelling methodology based on function representation as an attempt to bridge this gap. The proposed approach avoids the manual definition of geometric parameters and provides a method to control them with mathematical functions instead. A software prototype implementing the proposed approach is presented, and several use-cases are analysed.

Recep Yusuf Bekci, Yacine Mahdid, Jinling Xing et al.

In this study, we utilize Gaussian processes, probabilistic neural network, natural gradient boosting, and quantile regression augmented gradient boosting to model lead times of laser manufacturing processes. We introduce probabilistic modelling in the domain and compare the models in terms of different abilities. While providing a comparison between the models in real-life data, our work has many use cases and substantial business value. Our results indicate that all of the models beat the company estimation benchmark that uses domain experience and have good calibration with the empirical frequencies.