Metal Additive Manufacturing, Vol. 7 No. 4 Winter 2021

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In addition to the latest industry news, this 176-page issue of Metal Additive Manufacturing magazine includes the following exclusive features:

Metal AM in automotive:
How the Czinger 21C is redefining next-generation car manufacturing

The Czinger 21C hypercar is a ‘tour de force’ of metal Additive Manufacturing. With over 350 AM components used in the vehicle’s structure, suspension, brake systems, drivetrain and beyond, this is the realisation of the bold vision of Kevin Czinger, CEO of Divergent 3D.

Behind the headlines about the car’s record-breaking performance, however, is a far more important story: the development of the Divergent Adaptive Production System (DAPS), a complete software/hardware solution designed to replace traditional vehicle manufacturing. Jeff Kerns reports for Metal AM magazine.

Buying time with digital spare parts:
Opportunities for metal Additive Manufacturing

Spare parts keep the world turning, and their complex supply chain is an industry in itself, specifically designed to get trains moving, ships sailing, and industry producing.

But this is an expensive business, and one driven by calculated risk. Do you reduce your profits by stocking every expensive, highly engineered part that you might need, even though the chances are that most will never be used?

Here, Joseph Kowen considers if digital part inventories, in conjunction with metal Additive Manufacturing, can transform how the spare parts industry operates. What are the opportunities, and how are early adopters already taking advantage of them?

Burloak and the AM scalability challenge:
A contract manufacturer’s perspective on the shift to volume production

We all love to talk about how Additive Manufacturing can transform product design, improve an application’s performance, reduce part count and material waste, enable faster design cycles and far more besides. But what is less often discussed is the challenge of scaling up production once an application has been developed. It is this aspect of AM that has been the focus of activity at Burloak Technologies.

In this article, the company’s Jason Ball, VP & General Manager, and Keyvan Hosseinkhani, Technical Director, consider the challenges of scaling AM, and how they can be overcome.

Binder Jetting and beyond:
Insights from Fraunhofer IFAM’s second workshop on sinter-based Additive Manufacturing

After a one-year break, seventy industry and R&D participants from twelve countries found their way to the 2nd Workshop on Sinter Based Additive Manufacturing, Bremen, Germany, held from September 15–16, 2021.

Industry suppliers, part producers, end users and researchers, as well as experts from the event organiser, Fraunhofer IFAM, considered the status of existing and new technologies in the field. Whilst metal Binder Jetting (BJT) received most attention, Material Extrusion (MEX) technologies were also covered in depth. Prof Dr-Ing. Frank Petzoldt and Dr Sebastian Hein report.

The inestimable value of AI:
How Machine Learning can help AM project teams achieve their goals and beyond

They each have similar two-letter acronyms, and, for both technologies, it can be hard to separate hype from reality. But Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Additive Manufacturing also overlap in interesting and beneficial ways.

In this article, Stephen Warde of Intellegens considers how AI methods such as Machine Learning (ML) could help AM to deliver against expectations – and at the very least, to meet more realistic and commercially essential objectives, such as consistently delivering lighter, stronger components and supporting on-demand manufacturing.

The need for global standardisation:
Takeaways from the Standards Forum at Formnext 2021

As metal Additive Manufacturing progresses toward more widespread industry penetration, the need for globally recognised and agreed upon standards increases. The day before Formnext 2021, key standards organisations and a cross-section of the Additive Manufacturing community attended the annual Standards Forum at Formnext.

The forum’s programme illustrated the industry’s awareness of the need for standardisation and highlighted some of the challenges faced. Noah Mostow reports on the discussion on behalf of Metal AM magazine.

Laser Beam Powder Bed Fusion:
Process developments and numerical simulation

A technical session at the Euro PM2021 Virtual Congress, organised by the European Powder Metallurgy Association (EPMA) and held October 18–22, 2021, was devoted to the consideration of process developments and numerical simulation approaches for Powder Bed Fusion (PBF) Additive Manufacturing technologies.

In this report, Dr David Whittaker reviews four of the papers presented on this topic, looking at process parameter optimisation, increasing quality for Ti6Al4V medical parts, techniques to improve the AM of hot-work tool steels, and powder spreading improvements for stainless steel.

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