ADAPT Additive Manufacturing Consortium Shares Progress,
Receives Commitment for First Membership
New equipment, funding, member commitment, R&D marks
productive six months of consortium work
Golden, CO – ADAPT, the Alliance for the Development of Additive Processing Technologies, a research consortium focused on developing technologies to accelerate the certification and qualification of 3D printed metal parts – technologies at the forefront of today’s advanced manufacturing industries – has issued an update on progress made during its first six months of work, including a commitment from its first member organization.
Reaction Systems, Inc., which develops leading-edge technologies, has committed to become ADAPT’s first member. “I’m impressed with the center and how much they’ve accomplished so quickly with x-ray tomography,” said David T. Wickham, Reaction Systems’ president and senior project manager. “We have a project with a branch of the armed forces to make a part using additive manufacturing. It has an intricate interior channel that can only be made this way. If it moves forward, our production volume jumps, and we’ll need ADAPT’s expertise to show the part can withstand rigorous conditions. They’ve already demonstrated they can provide useful data to help us do that, and membership helps us expand our capabilities and expertise in using catalysts on complex surfaces.”
“When we first met, they were looking at conventional machining to create this part,” notes Heidi Hostetter of ADAPT founding industry member Faustson Tool. “A complex part, accelerated schedule, and low volume was tailor-made for 3D metal printing. We worked with them to make the part in a few days, where it may have taken six weeks with conventional machining. This is an emerging technology that has countless applications, including defense and national security and, with every project we do, along with ADAPT’s research, we show people its power and potential.”
ADAPT has secured additional funding recently from several sources. Colorado School of Mines Materials Engineering Associate Professor Jeff King and Mechanical Engineering Assistant Professor and Technical Co-Director of ADAPT Douglas Van Bossuyt received a $500,000 grant from the Department of Energy to study the radiation tolerance of 3D-printed metals. Confluent Medical Technologies gave a $100,000 gift to establish a named fellowship at Mines and support research toward 3D printing of shape memory alloy medical devices.
In the lab, Faustson has provided eight build plates, Inconel powders and argon gas. Staff is currently testing 5,000 printed metal parts. A functioning database interface based on technology from founding partner Citrine Informatics has been created, and publications are being prepared for submission this summer. Equipment procured and installed includes a Zeiss Xradia 520 Versa 3D X-ray microscope; a Keyence VHX-5000 optical measurement system; servo-hydraulic mechanical test equipment from MTS Systems Corporation, and other metallurgical prep equipment, in addition to the Concept Laser M2 Cusing MultiLaser machine at Faustson Tool’s facility.
Staffing includes a full-time research and operations manager, two new doctoral research assistants, with three more starting in August; a fellowship; two new teaching assistants starting in August; as many as a dozen undergraduates in the work-study program; several research volunteers from the Colorado School of Mines undergraduate ranks; and a summer intern from Red Rocks Community College funded by the National Science Foundation.
As ADAPT continues its work, the consortium is actively seeking additional academic and industry partners to support and contribute to its research on important additive manufacturing areas, including advanced structure-property characterizations of metals using sub-micron-resolved computed tomography (CT) and diffraction contrast tomography, thermomechanical testing, 3D surface metrology, and state-of-the-art optical microscopy and sample preparation. Analysis is underway on more than 5,000 specimens with respect to build geometry, power, speed, and number of lasers used, and more, to build a robust database.
About ADAPT
The Alliance for the Development of Additive Processing Technologies (ADAPT) is a research and development organization dedicated to the creation of next-generation data informatics and advanced characterization technologies for additive manufacturing technologies. ADAPT uses these tools to help industry and government qualify, standardize, assess, and optimize advanced manufacturing processes and parts. Several levels of membership to the ADAPT consortium are available. Founding industry members include Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp., Faustson Tool, Lockheed Martin, Citrine Informatics. Grant funding from the Colorado Office of Economic Development & International Trade (OEDIT) was provided to Manufacturer’s Edge and The National Institute of Standards and Technology’s Hollings Manufacturing Extension Partnership. For more information, find ADAPT on the web, LinkedIn, Facebook, or Twitter.