Additive manufacturing method and apparatus for fabricating a component using acoustic forces to position precursor material

A method of fabricating a component, comprising the steps of:

• providing a precursor material in a working medium,
• creating acoustic forces and positioning the precursor material in the working medium under an effect of the acoustic forces, so that a material distribution is formed, which has a shape of the component to be fabricated, and
• subjecting at least one of the material distribution and the working medium to a fixation, so that the precursor material of the material distribution or the working medium surrounding the material distribution is bound, wherein
• the step of creating the acoustic forces includes generating an acoustic interference image, which is an acoustically holographic image generated using an acoustic source device being connected by a connection with a control device and being operated by the control device for creating a primary acoustic wave and additionally to the acoustic source device, using a phase hologram, wherein, for generating the acoustically holographic image, the phase hologram includes an acoustic diffractive element that imparts a phase modulation on the primary acoustic wave created by the acoustic source device, said acoustic diffractive element including a solid holographic plate being arranged as a transmission hologram or a reflection hologram, a structure of said acoustic diffractive element being calculated in dependency on a wavefront of the primary acoustic wave and an intensity distribution corresponding to the shape of the component to be fabricated, wherein the acoustic diffractive element is placed along an acoustic beam path between the acoustic source device and the precursor material in the working medium,
• the material distribution is formed by moving the precursor material towards energy extrema of the holographic image, and
• the holographic image is created independently of an inner shape of a container accommodating the working medium with the precursor material.