Results and STL Compensation

The results can be viewed in Simulation Utility for Netfabb or ParaView by importing the .case files. The post-process distortion is shown in Figure 4.

Figure 4: DED compensation distortion results

To create a compensated STL from the DED results, the input file for distort_stl has the *STLF card added to it, pointing at the nominal geometry STL. Execute the compensation from the command line:

$ distort_stl DEDCompWarp-1.in

The resulting compensated STL is shown in Figure 5.

Figure 5: Compensated geometry from a DED simulation

From this compensated geometry one can create a new laser path which, when printed, will reduce distortion in this part.