An Advanced Materials Additive Manufacturing (AM2) System

An NSF MRI has funded a project to design and construct a unique Advanced Materials Additive Manufacturing (AM²) system dedicated to fabricating freeform parts from advanced materials. Additive manufacturing makes possible virtually any geometrically complex part with very little impact on cost. The AM² will help to develop the research infrastructure to advance AM material development, with the focus on the uniqueness of this process to produce novel materials, such as functionally graded materials or bulk metallic glasses.

The AM² system will enable 1) investigation of freeform fabrication of BMGs through control of heating and cooling; 2) investigation of FGMs that can potentially integrate multiple materials with traditionally incompatible properties into one unified part; or alternately, to repair structures to be stronger than their original condition which will revolutionize remanufacturing products; 3) fabrication of parts using elemental powders so that real-time material customizability can be achieved; 4) the validation of critical multi-scale and multi-physics modeling and analysis for AM processes; 5) develop novel advanced manufacturing applications.

The AM² is a novel material fabrication system, available to industry and laboratories through consortium and research projects. Partnerships are sought to utilize this unique research equipment and to develop technologies which can be transferred to the community. The system incorporates programmable robotic deposition with control of the material fabrication parameters. Three lasers, one 2kw CW and two 100w pulsed, are combined with 6 precision powder feeders all enclosed within a controlled atmosphere chamber which can use inert or semi-inert gases. The system incorporates a number of sensors which can monitor temperature and oxygen level, and has a high-speed camera, spectrometer, pyrometer, and more. The total build volume is roughly 20” cubed. The system will be described in detail with examples of it use given.