Additive manufacturing technologies have been leveraged for more than 3 decades to realizing robust prototyping applications. With the technological advancements and innovations in the AM space, it is also being widely used across industries in serial production endeavors. Most high-tech parts, especially for the medical, aeronautics, and space industries are manufactured using AM technologies.

Despite its wide-scale adoption and string of benefits, additive manufacturing solutions or technologies are not immune to challenges and drawbacks. Ill-defined process parameters may make the engineers run several 3D print jobs against several parameters. And, the end product is unfit for the ultimate application. Besides, this leads to longer process development times, high amounts of waste in terms of material as well as time, and other critical resources.

MSC’s Additive Manufacturing solutions are robust, reliable, and easy to use solutions and help engineers overcome the current challenges that will eventually reduce the production costs, optimize prototype design and printing parameters for enhanced performance. Our comprehensive AM toolkit helps companies optimize their entire additive manufacturing process chain, from CAE to selection of raw material to manufacturing and reliable quality assurance.

Key Solutions

Metal Additive Manufacturing

Simufact Additive, our solution for manufacturers and researchers in the Metal Additive Manufacturing space focuses on build simulation and subsequent steps including, heat treatment, cutting build part from the base plate, removing support’s structure, Hot Isostatic Pressing (HIP), etc. It helps the manufacturers produce the metal AM components first-time-right to save cost and time. It helps in reducing the learning process dramatically, run several test variations prior to the actual production process thus enabling huge savings on the material and energy consumption costs. All these advantages along with the increase machine / manpower availability and productivity also helping in shortening the time-to-market which is a critical parameter today.

Simufact additive is the foremost simulation package for metal build process optimization with regards to speed, accuracy, functionality and usability. The work-flow oriented user interface of the software offers best-in-class GUI for customers making it a popular choice.

Polymer and Composite Additive Manufacturing

Our Digimat AM solution leverages a unique combination of material engineering, structural engineering, and process simulation to assist manufacturers “print right the first time”. Our solution aims at accelerating the adoption process of the AM technology as production technique by providing AM-focused predictive simulation tools enabling the replication of the standard engineering workflow. Manufacturers gain a host of advantages with our AM solution such as efficiency enhancement, material savings, upgraded build knowledge, reduced physical productions and testing, larger portfolio of composite materials, faster material development, reduced time to market and cost-effective AM processes.

Material Lifecycle Management

MaterialCenter is a Materials Lifecycle Management System designed to link material specialists to mechanical simulation. MaterialCenter captures data from integrated processes to ensure full traceability across the enterprise and throughout the product lifecycle. Raw materials and process parameters are pivotal in ensuring the success of the entire additive manufacturing process chain. Our next-generation material lifecycle management system ensures the utmost quality assurance including raw materials to the finished part, by capturing both virtual and physical manufacturing inputs. It also sorts through an array of available machine and process parameters in a robust manner to identify the desired material properties. It also leverages comparison tools such as material compare and cross plot to optimize process parameters that are crucial for producing consistent and reliable components.

MSC Apex Generative design

MSC Apex Generative Design provides the users an unparalleled ‘Design for Additive Manufacturing’ Experience. It offers an end-to-end solution for designers making high-precision, industrial components. With much lesser human intervention, it takes you from simulation to manufacturing faster and with more accuracy and efficiency than other conventional software. It is a unique tool allowing users to innovate, improve and validate parts, all in one comprehensive solution. Most users have experienced 80% reductions in the initial design and set up time by merging multiple steps, from a starting geometry through preparation to optimization. It’s simple, with a high user-focused design and its innovative approach has been proven in practice. MSC Apex Generative Design allows users to almost automatically generate multiple smoothed design candidates that all satisfy the design criteria while minimizing the weight. The output geometry can be directly manufactured and used without manual re-work and can be imported directly in Simufact Additive or Digimat AM to achieve first-time-right cost-effective results for every part.

Related Products

• Digimat: The Nonlinear Multi-scale Material and Structure Modeling Platform
• MaterialCenter: Materials Lifecycle Management
• MSC Apex Generative Design: Smart Generative Design that provides an unparalleled Design for Additive Manufacturing Experience
• Simufact Additive: A Powerful Simulation Tool to predict distortion in Powder Bed Additive Manufacturing