Additive Manufacturing Dominates YSU Energy Forum
YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio -- The relationship between additive manufacturing and sustainable energy was the focus of speakers at Monday’s opening of the Sustainable Energy Forum at Youngstown State University.
“Sustainable energy and additive manufacturing go together like peanut butter and jelly,” said Ed Morris, director of the National Additive Manufacturing Innovation Institute, who led off three speakers discussing additive during the forum’s morning session. The two-day forum concludes today.
In his remarks outlining NAMII’s mission, Morris, also vice president of the National Center for Defense Manufacturing and Machining, which was awarded the federal contract to develop and manage NAMII last year, said NAMII’s role is to “help the technologies coming out of research and development” at universities and to “build a bridge” that takes those technologies in product application.
The intent is “to leverage the fantastic power of additive manufacturing,” apply it to the manufacturing sector in cooperation with NAMII’s public and private partner, “to create innovative new products, spawn new companies, raise the talent level and the educational energy … and spur the economy of the united States,” he continued. “That’s the same mission you’ve got in sustainable energy – peanut butter and jelly,” he remarked.
Additive manufacturing, which creates objects by adding materials rather than subtractive technologies such as machining, represents game-changing technology, he emphasized. He showed off a roller bearing that was printed rather than assembled, with the ball bearings in place between the inner and outer rings.
“You can do things you can’t make in any other way, and if you have new rules that changes the game,” he said. One of the roadblocks for the technology is training engineers to take advantage of additive manufacturing’s capabilities, he added.
Kelly Visconti, technology manager for the U.S. Department of Energy’s advanced manufacturing office, further outlined the relationship between sustainable energy and additive manufacturing. The office has two objectives: to help develop more efficient manufacturing processes and to use advanced technologies to make more efficient products.
Public awareness of additive manufacturing has skyrocketed in the last five months, she points out, but still has a way to go to reach what she called “rock star” status.
According to Visconti, about a third of the energy used in the United States is used to make things and the remaining two thirds “in the way we use them.” Her office’s objective is a 50% reduction over a 10-year period in the projects it supports, as well as to support manufacturing technologies that will benefit multiple industries.
Additive manufacturing consists of a ‘suite of technologies” employing diverse materials and methods, putting material “exactly where you need it,” she explained. Its advantages include energy savings, design freedom, waste reduction, cost savings, and agile and shorter supply chains.
“You have material being placed where you want it and you have energy going where you want it,” she said. Through the life cycle of a part, from raw material through use and disposal, “you can see potential energy savings at every step along the way,” she added. Such savings can come from using less material in production processes, replacing more energy-intensive processes, and reduced fuel and energy consumption from transporting products, as well as remanufacturing and repurposing goods.
She acknowledged additive manufacturing is not the “perfect process for all situations” due to limits including manufacturing speed, available materials and validation.
As an example of how additive manufacturing can be used, Visconti offered case studies for airline brackets. “Some of the studies have shown that folks were able to use additive manufacturing to optimize over 120 brackets, resulting in 85 kilograms of weight savings,” she said. “That’s an entire other passenger on a plane you could carry around rather than material that serves actually no purpose,” she said. On average, the study showed up to 80% mass savings by using additive manufacturing in redesigning parts.
Using additive manufacturing to manufacture components for an aircraft such as the wing box, Dr. Craig Blue, director of the manufacturing demonstration facility at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, offered five years as an estimate. “There’s a tremendous amount of work being done on qualification, he said.
Blue led the development of ORNL’s advanced manufacturing initiative. He said the lab is focusing on electron beam powder bed and fused deposition modeling. Use of nickel-based superalloys is being explored for aerospace applications. Carbon-reinforced polymers are being developed that could help expand polymer-based products made using additive manufacturing from their primary use in prototyping.
The lab as a "strong thrust" in neutron science, which can be used to map individual stresses in 3-dimensional space, as well as to image in 3D, providing a nondestructive inside look at materials, he said.
Blue also noted that the lab is working with more than 4,400 science, technology, engineering and mathematics teachers and students.
Copyright The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.
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