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Humtown Leads Transition to Additive Manufacturing
COLUMBIANA, Ohio -- At first glance, the production floor at Humtown Products doesn’t appear much different than any other shop that makes patterns and molds.
There are CNC machines milling patterns that will be used to form casting molds. There are presses creating large compressed sand cores. There are tradesmen putting the finishing touch on various pieces. There are lathes and there are shelves stacked 15 feet high with thousands of different forms in stock.
Today, this small company represents the transitional face of American manufacturing. It is leveraging the know-how and experience of accepted methods of craftsmanship while embracing the power and efficiency of advanced means of production through additive manufacturing.
“We’re redefining the company,” says Mark Lamoncha, Humtown president and CEO. “We started as a pattern shop, using wood, plastics and metal. Now, it’s faster to get from proof-of-concept to production. If you can dream it, you can build it.”
Lamoncha is referring to his company’s recent integration of 3-D printing into its operations.
Humtown produces patterns and molds foundries use to cast metal components for rail cars, aircraft, military vehicles, automobiles and mining equipment.
Last year, the company purchased and installed a Fortus 360 3-D printer in a room just off the pattern shop floor. The machine engages the additive manufacturing process to produce patterns that once required several time-consuming and costly steps.
In the casting industry, a pattern is a scale model of a component that is created to form a mold. Often, creating a pattern requires custom-made dies engineered to specification – often very expensive.
“In many cases, tooling for an engine part can be upwards of a half-million dollars,” Lamoncha says. “But, what if they make that tooling and find out for some reason that it doesn’t work?”
The answer is to bypass the tooling process altogether by “printing” the pattern in 3-D, as Lamoncha demonstrates. The tools that once filled large amounts of storage space have become files on a computer sent virtually to the 3-D printer. The printer reads the schematics and then begins to essentially “build” a part from scratch, layer by layer, in this case with a durable plastic.
“A part here can be produced for $20,000, and if it doesn’t work, they can redesign it and just print another model,” Lamoncha says. Using the conventional method could take 20 weeks to engineer and build the tool needed to create a pattern. Through additive manufacturing, building the prototype can be done in less than two weeks.
The next step is to use additive manufacturing in the production of the intricate sand cores, or sand molds, used to cast products for industry.
Humtown is part of the consortium led by the Youngstown Business Incubator that recently was awarded $1.3 million through America Makes, the National Additive Manufacturing Innovation Institute in Youngstown.
The program funds research that will promote the use of the additive manufacturing process to build cores made of densely packed sand. Other partners in the effort are the University of Northern Iowa, the American Foundry Society, ExOne Co., and Janney Capital Markets. “This award marks the next step in YBI’s efforts to transform the region’s economy,” remarks Barb Ewing, YBI chief operating officer. “Now, we’ll be able to assist our existing manufacturing base to understand how to optimize new technology to make them more competitive.”
The traditional method for producing sand core boxes is through high pressured, powerful presses that force sand around a particular pattern, forming a cavity that will serve as a mold. The molds are sent to foundries and customers who then pour a specific metal into the sand mold, casting the part.
New technology allows these sand molds, especially those with intricate designs, to be printed, notes Lamoncha’s son, Brandon, Humtown sales manager. In early February, he paid a visit to the University of Northern Iowa, which has such a printer.
“It’s more cost-effective to print it. The quality is improved and delivery time is shortened,” he says. “It’s like hitting the trifecta as to what industry really needs.”
Humtown and other industrial partners are also working closely with YSU and its newly created Center for Innovation in Additive Manufacturing, says Brett Conner, associate professor of mechanical and industrial engineering.
“We need to be able to use this equipment to help business understand capabilities with additive manufacturing,” he says. “There are things you can do with 3-D that you can’t do otherwise.”
The center, in Moser Hall, is equipped with two high-end 3-D printers that will help faculty research, undergraduate and graduate students, and at the same time invite private industry to benefit from the technology.
YSU is just the second university in the world with this type of equipment installed and fully operational, says Martin Abraham, dean of the YSU College of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics. “The acquisition of this new equipment, along with the hiring of world-class faculty, demonstrates that YSU is committed to providing the resources necessary to create a state-of-the art additive manufacturing program that will attract the best and brightest students,” he says.
Conner elaborates that YSU’s center not only can provide business with access to some of this technology, but also can train students on how to operate and use these machines. “Workforce development, operating and maintaining the equipment and post-processing,” he says. “These are key areas that need to be developed.”
It’s important for companies such as Humtown to recruit those who are well versed in this new technology, Brandon Lamoncha says. “That’s our goal. We need to develop a curriculum and standards, because right now, they don’t exist. We need to develop a matrix, because right now, it’s still more efficient to use CNC.”
Indeed, there are limitations to 3-D printing and additive manufacturing for Humtown, Mark Lamoncha says. The real benefit comes from those components that are smaller and not mass produced. “It will eliminate tooling when it comes to low production and prototyping,” he says. “You’ll still need a die for the high-production parts.”
Bob Knight, manager of the Humtown pattern shop, has worked at the company for 36 years and says he’s never witnessed such a dramatic change in both Humtown’s manufacturing and workplace philosophy.
“Last year saw the biggest changes in the company since I’ve been here,” Knight observes. “It’s combining the Old World with the New World,” he says as he refines a plastic pattern.
Mark Lamoncha’s son, Bronson, a graduate of YSU and now a mechanical engineer in Humtown’s advanced manufacturing department, says that CNC – an acronym for computer numerically controlled – machines are still very necessary for larger components.
Though automated, CNC machining uses “subtractive manufacturing” to form a pattern, the younger Lamoncha explains. The process involves precision tooling that manufactures a part from a solid piece of material, in this case, plastic. “What happens is that it leaves a lot of waste,” usually in the form of material shavings on the shop floor.
Additive manufacturing eliminates all of this waste. “Every ounce of material is used,” he says.
Early this month, managers from Tesla visited the Columbiana plant and were impressed by the steps Humtown is taking to improve its efficiencies and embrace this technology, Mark Lamoncha relates.
As for developing new technology to print sand molds, the CEO envisions that in the future, production floors will be filled with large-scale printers that can rapidly pump out these products, rather than the large, noisy presses now used.
“There’s so much potential that’s not tapped into,” Lamoncha says. “We’d love to have a sand printing machine.”
The key to developing this technology is speed. A sand printer such as the one at the University of Iowa cannot turn out molds as fast as the conventional method, Lamoncha says. As this improves, the entire method of production will change along with it.
“One day, there’ll be a factory of these machines printing these products,” Lamoncha says. “It’s unlimited as to what you can do with it.”
EDITOR'S NOTE: This story first appeared in The Business Journal's February edition.
Copyright 2014 The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.
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