Laser Beam Powder Bed Fusion (PBF-LB) is a technology rich in process parameters and exacting material specifications, all developed with the aim of delivery quality and repeatability as the industry moves towards volume production. However, without control of a laser’s focal spot, neither the material specification nor the handling of the material in the build chamber can guarantee the hoped-for results. As Ophir Spiricon Europe’s Christian Dini explains, when it comes to lasers, there is no control without the gathering of reliable data. [First published in Metal AM Vol. 6 No. 2, Summer 2020]
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During the Euro PM2019 Congress and Exhibition in Maastricht, the Netherlands, this October, a number of Special Interest Seminars were held focusing on various aspects of the Powder Metallurgy and Additive Manufacturing industries. In one seminar, Dr Uemit Aydin, GKN Additive, and Nicholas Turner, Materials Solutions, looked to the future of Additive Manufacturing and expressed their views on its industrialisation. David Whittaker attended the SIS on behalf of Metal AM magazine and reports on its conclusions.[First published in Metal AM Vol. 5 No. 4, Winter 2019]
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On July 4, 2019, Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) sponsored and co-organised a one-day symposium in Melbourne entitled ‘Towards a True Digital Twin’. The event, which followed APICAM 2019, the 2nd Asia-Pacific International Conference on Additive Manufacturing, brought together experts in a range of relevant fields including metal Additive Manufacturing, computational modelling, multi-scale techniques, structure-property relations, machine learning and artificial intelligence, and digital twins of industrial processes. Here, CSIRO Manufacturing’s Dr Dayalan Gunasegaram and Dr Tony Murphy consider the importance of the digital twin in AM and report on some of the event’s key findings.
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At the 2019 Additive Manufacturing Users Group (AMUG) Conference in Chicago, Illinois, a panel was held to discuss requirements for Additive Manufacturing systems. Despite the late hour of the panel and depth in the week at which it was held, a formidable crowd organised themselves to hear Ryan Dehoff of ORNL, Filip Francqui of Granutools and John Barnes of The Barnes Group Advisors discuss the topic of powder in AM. In this article, the panellists explore in more detail the differences in powder requirements between AM systems.
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The third Metal Additive Manufacturing Conference (MAMC2018), organised by the Austrian Society for Metallurgy and Materials (ASMET) and voestalpine, took place in Vienna, Austria, from November 21–23, 2018. The event, which attracted an international audience, covered a broad range of metal AM technologies and considered the technical challenges that need to be overcome to make the industry more economically competitive with conventional manufacturing. Prof Dr Bruno Buchmayr, Dr Bruno Hribernik, Dipl-Ing Gerhard Panzl and Prof Dr Jürgen Stampfl review the event for Metal AM magazine.
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Technical papers presented at the Euro PM2018 conference, organised by the European Powder Metallurgy Association (EPMA) and held in Bilbao, Spain, October 14-18, 2018, addressed issues related to the influences of chemical contamination and powder characteristics on processability in metal Additive Manufacturing. In the following report, Dr David Whittaker reviews four presented papers that touched on each of these issues.
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AMPM2018, the fifth annual Additive Manufacturing with Powder Metallurgy Conference, was held in San Antonio, Texas, USA, from June 17-20, 2018. The event continues to enjoy impressive growth as the breadth and depth of its technically focused progamme expands. In this report, Dr David Whittaker reviews three presentations that cover the characterisation of hard-to-weld nickel-base superalloys, the corrosion behaviour of 420 stainless steel and the extrusion of feedstock containing water atomised 17-4 PH stainless steel powder
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A session at the Euro PM2017 congress, organised by the European Powder Metallurgy Association (EPMA) and held in Milan, October 1-5, 2017, focused on a number of alternative technologies for the Additive Manufacturing of metallic components. In the following report Dr David Whittaker reviews three papers that highlighted the potential of the lithographic Additive Manufacturing of metal-based suspensions, the characteristics of porous Ti6Al4V materials produced by three-dimensional fibre deposition and bio gelcasting, and Fused Filament Fabrication for the production of metal parts.
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As Additive Manufacturing shifts from process development and characterisation activities into the series production of components for critical applications, in-process quality control, qualification and certification are areas of fundamental importance to widespread adoption of AM [1,2]. In the following report, engineers from Sigma Labs, Inc., present the results of a study to establish a correlation between in-process data collected using the company’s PrintRite3D SENSORPAK® system and PrintRite3D INSPECT® software and the results of the metallographic testing of as-built specimens.
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A collection of papers at the World PM2016 Congress, held in Hamburg, October 9-13, 2016, addressed the issues of non-destructive examination (NDE) of internal defects in additively manufactured parts and the control of AM processing through appropriate powder characterisation analysis. Dr David Whittaker presents Metal Additive Manufacturing magazine’s final report from the congress.
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The Additive Manufacturing of light alloys was the focus of three separate technical sessions at the World PM2016 Congress, held in Hamburg, Germany, from 9-13 October, 2016. The event, which was organised by the European Powder Metallurgy Association (EPMA), covered all aspects of metal powder processing technologies. This report reviews three of the key papers from these sessions, two relating to the AM of aluminium alloys and the third to the AM of a magnesium alloy.
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In part two of our report on technical advances in metal AM at the Euro PM2015 Congress, Reims, France, October 4-7 2015, Dr David Whittaker reports on six further papers presented at the conference’s very well attended metal AM sessions. These papers cover the heat treatment of IN939 superalloy parts, the production of Ni718 superalloy powder, advances in inkjet-based metal AM and the production of gears by Laser Metal Deposition (LMD).
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