Jan 8, 2018 | By Tess
A dedicated research team has been working closely with the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) to advance quality control testing for parts using the large-scale BAAM 3D printing process developed by Cincinnati Incorporated.
The BAAM 3D printing process, also known as Big Area Additive Manufacturing, is one of the largest-scale 3D printing systems for producing polymer-based parts. The machine is so big, in fact, that Amy Peterson, a Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) professor of chemical engineering who is working on BAAM quality control research, was pictured standing inside the 3D printer.
Professor Amy Peterson
Supported by funding from the Office of Naval Research, Peterson and her team have been analyzing the BAAM 3D printing system in terms of temperature and printing time with the goal of producing high quality parts with optimal performances.
“We are interested in tailoring properties and in understanding the relationships between interlayer polymer diffusion, interlayer adhesion, and residual thermal stress,” Peterson commented.
“In the area of additive manufacturing, my group has been studying the effect of assembly conditions on resulting physical and mechanical properties using both experimental and computational techniques,” she added.
So far, ORNL’s BAAM 3D printer has produced such large-scale parts as a shell of a sports car and a 30-foot-long hull for a submersible vehicle. Through continued research, Peterson’s team is aiming to improve how these large-scale parts can handle residual stress (which can cause warping and delamination) by finding the optimal temperature gradients for layer adhesion.
“What we hope to do with the thermal information is to improve the reliability of the process to ensure that if you’re going to be printing a 100-pound structure, that there will not be warping or delamination between the layers,” the researcher explained.
“The welds between layers are the weakest part of a print. If you apply a load you thought was appropriate and you don’t have a good weld between the layers, your part will fail,” she added. “To be able to manufacture a single, large, complex piece is really exciting. Significant material, energy, and time savings can be achieved.”
In manufacturing the 3D printed submersible hull for the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy and the Navy’s Disruptive Technology Lab, ORNL was reportedly able to cut back production time and costs for the part significantly.
“The cost of a traditional hull ranges from $600,000 to $800,000 and typically takes 3-5 months to manufacture,” reads a report by the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy. “Using BAAM reduced hull production costs by 90 percent and shortened production time to a matter of days—giving the Navy the opportunity to create ‘on demand’ vehicles while also saving time, money, and energy.”
As higher performance parts are produced on the BAAM 3D printing system as quality control techniques improve, Peterson believes that the BAAM process will become increasingly viable for large-scale, small batch production, especially for complex structures.
Posted in 3D Printing Technology
Maybe you also like:
- Japanese engineers create tactile 3D printed surface patterns using clever technique
- China unveiled ambitious Action Plan: annual 3D printing sales revenue to reach USD 3 billion by 2020
- Playdough-like particles could self-assemble into functional architectures, may change the face of 3D printing
- TU Munich experiments with selective binding to 3D print intricate bionic structures out of concrete
- 4D printed hydrogel leaf brings University of Alberta researchers one step closer to bioprinting organs
- Merging molecular science and engineering to make 3D printing faster, cheaper and more consistent
- Swiss researchers develop 4D prints that can expand up to 200%
- Swiss researchers develop 4D prints that can expand up to 200%
- Fraunhofer ILT, Rapid Shape develop support-free 'TwoCure' resin 3D printing process
- University of Michigan professor doubles 3D printing speeds using vibration-mitigating algorithm
3Ders.org provides the latest news about 3D printing technology and 3D printers. We are now seven years old and have around 1.5 million unique visitors per month.
