Cost Saving Potential of a Shell-Core Strategy of Combined Powder Bed Fusion of Metals with Laser Beam and Hot Isostatic Pressing

Powder Bed Fusion of Metals with Laser Beam (PBF-LB/M) offers the possibility to manufacture various complex geometries with integrated functions in one build job independent of tools. However, due to the long process duration and high machine investment, hourly machine cost rates are an obstacle to positive business cases. One idea to reduce machine cost per part is to additively generate a shell geometry with a loose powder core to decrease PBF-LB/M process time in a first step and achieve high density in another step by Hot Isostatic Pressing (HIP). This idea to use hybrid manufacturing leads to a trade-off between reduced manufacturing costs for PBF-LB/M and additional manufacturing costs for HIP. In this work, the cost saving potential of a shell-core strategy is quantified for sample parts. This provides information whether investigating the technological challenges of PBF-LB/M manufactured shell-core geometries and subsequent HIP makes sense in further research from an economic perspective.