Manufacturing Commons^™

Development Of Pre-Repair Machining Strategies For Laser-Aided Metallic Component Remanufacturing, Xinchang Zhang, Wenyuan Cui, Leon Hill, Wei Li, Frank W. Liou

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Remanufacturing worn metallic components can prolong the service life of parts that need frequent replacement but are extremely costly to manufacture, such as aircraft titanium components, casting dies. Additive manufacturing (AM) technology enables the repair of such valuable components by depositing filler materials at the worn area layer by layer to regenerate the missing geometry. In general, damaged parts would be inspected and pre-machined prior to material deposition to remove oil, residue, oxidized layers or defects located in inaccessible regions. Therefore, the motivation of this paper is to introduce pre-repair machining strategies for removing contaminated materials from damaged components and …

Frequency Response Inspection Of Additively Manufactured Parts For Defect Identification, Kevin Johnson, Jason Blough, Andrew Barnard, Troy Hartwig, Ben Brown, David Soine, Tristan Collum, Edward C. Kinzel, Douglas A. Bristow, Robert G. Landers

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

The goal of this paper is to evaluate internal defects in AM parts using dynamic measurements. The natural frequencies of AM parts can be identified by measuring the response of the part(s) to a dynamic input. Different excitation methods such as a modal impact hammer or shakers can be used to excite the parts. Various methods exist to measure the parts' responses and find the natural frequencies. This paper will investigate the use of Doppler lasers, accelerometers and Digital Image Correlation (DIC). The parts evaluated in this work include sets of parts that are still attached to the AM build …

General Rules For Pre-Process Planning In Powder Bed Fusion System -- A Review, Tan Pan, Sreekar Karnati, Frank W. Liou

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Powder bed fusion (PBF) is one of the current additive manufacturing techniques that can fabricate almost fully dense functional metal components. Through a layer by layer fabrication methodology, complex geometries to meet the requirements of aerospace, automotive, biomedicine industries, etc. can be produced. The success of a build largely depends on having a flawless pre-process planning, including build orientation selection, support structure optimization, process parameter chosen, etc., which closely relates to the quality of the final products. Geometric inaccuracy and poor surface quality can occur due to a bad build plan. This review presents the crucial general planning rules for …

In-Situ Optical Emission Spectroscopy During Slm Of 304l Stainless Steel, Cody S. Lough, Luis I. Escano, Minglei Qu, Christopher C. Smith, Robert G. Landers, Douglas A. Bristow, Lianyi Chen, Edward C. Kinzel

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

This paper demonstrates the potential of in-situ Optical Emission Spectroscopy (OES) to monitor the Selective Laser Melting (SLM) process. A spectrometer is split into the beam path of a home-built SLM system to collect visible light emitted from the melt pool and plume. The inline configuration allows signal collection regardless of the laser scan location. The spectral data can be used to calculate the temperature of the vapor plume and correlated with the melt-pool size. The effects of varying the atmosphere and pressure on the OES signal are also explored. These results demonstrate that OES can provide useful feedback to …

Effects Of Thermal Camera Resolution On Feature Extraction In Selective Laser Melting, Xin Wang, Cody S. Lough, Douglas A. Bristow, Edward C. Kinzel, Robert G. Landers

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Selective Laser Melting (SLM) is a common additive manufacturing process which uses a laser energy source to fuse metal powder layer by layer. Engineering properties and microstructure are related to the part’s thermal history. It is important to measure the thermal history in-situ to qualify parts and provide the sensing which is necessary for process control. A common measurement tool for this purpose is a thermal camera that records the thermal emission of the part’s surface.

This study investigates the effects of spatial sampling resolution of thermal cameras when monitoring the temperature in SLM processes. High-fidelity simulation of an SLM …

Design Of Lattice Structures With Graded Density Fabricated By Additive Manufacturing, Wenjin Tao, Yong Liu, Austin T. Sutton, Krishna C. R. Kolan, Ming-Chuan Leu

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Lattice structures fabricated by Additive Manufacturing (AM) processes are promising for many applications, such as lightweight structures and energy absorbers. However, predicting and controlling of their mechanical behaviors is challenging due to the complexity of modeling and the uncertainties exist in the manufacturing process. In this paper, we explore the possibilities enabled by controlling the local densities. A set of lattice structures with different density gradients are designed using an implicit isosurface equation, and they are manufactured by Selective Laser Melting (SLM) process with 304L stainless steel. Finite element analysis and compression test are used to evaluate their mechanical properties. …

Modeling Of Cloud-Based Digital Twins For Smart Manufacturing With Mt Connect, Liwen Hu, Ngoc-Tu Nguyen, Wenjin Tao, Ming-Chuan Leu, Xiaoqing Frank Liu, Rakib Shahriar, S M Nahian Al Sunny

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

The common modeling of digital twins uses an information model to describe the physical machines. The integration of digital twins into productive cyber-physical cloud manufacturing (CPCM) systems imposes strong demands such as reducing overhead and saving resources. In this paper, we develop and investigate a new method for building cloud-based digital twins (CBDT), which can be adapted to the CPCM platform. Our method helps reduce computing resources in the information processing center for efficient interactions between human users and physical machines. We introduce a knowledge resource center (KRC) built on a cloud server for information intensive applications. An information model …

Foil-Based Additive Manufacturing System And Method, Hai-Lung Tsai, Yiyu Shen, Yingqi Li, Chen Chen

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

An additive manufacturing system, method of manufacturing, and fabricated part. The system uses a material joining laser system to join together foil sheets to form a metal part. The material joining laser system can be configured to join adjacent foil sheets together in a substantially uniform manner. The manufacturing system also includes a material removal system that removes material from selected locations of the foil sheets to shape the foil sheets to correspond with selective slices of the part. The material removal system can be a laser system, such as a laser system configured to remove material from a foil …

Building Zr-Based Metallic Glass Part On Ti-6al-4v Substrate By Laser-Foil-Printing Additive Manufacturing, Yingqi Li, Yiyu Shen, Ming-Chuan Leu, Hai-Lung Tsai

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Through using Zr intermediate layers, Zr_52.5Ti₅Al₁₀Ni_14.6Cu_17.9 metallic glass (MG) parts are successfully built on Ti-6Al-4V substrates by laser-foil-printing (LFP) additive manufacturing technology in which MG foils are laser welded layer-by-layer onto the substrate. The printed MG part is free of porosity, cracking and crystallization; additionally, its glass transition temperature, crystallization temperature, micro-hardness, and tensile strength are very similar to the original MG material. The Zr intermediate layers are aimed at preventing direct interaction between the first layer of MG foil and the Ti substrate; otherwise, the welded MG foils would peel …

Towards Defect Detection In Metal Slm Parts Using Modal Analysis "Fingerprinting", James Urban, Nick E. Capps, Brian M. West, Troy Hartwig, Ben Brown, Robert G. Landers, Douglas A. Bristow, Edward C. Kinzel

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

The validation of Additively Manufactured (AM) materials is a difficult and expensive process because the local engineering properties are a function of the thermal history. The thermal history varies with the process parameters, as well as the part geometry. This paper presents a case study using modal testing to identify defects in realistic AM parts. A setup consisting of a Scanning Laser Doppler Vibrometer (LDV) was used to identify the resonant frequencies for several geometrically identical parts on a build plate. Parts with suboptimal process parameters from purposely varying the process parameters, are identified by a shift in the mode …

Construction Of Metallic Glass Structures By Laser-Foil-Printing Technology, Yiyu Shen, Yingqi Li, Hai-Lung Tsai

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Metallic glasses (MGs) have superior mechanical properties such as high tensile strength, hardness, and corrosion resistance, as compared to crystalline metals. Although newly developed MGs have significantly reduced critical cooling rates down to 10 K/s, products of MGs are still limited to simple geometries such as foils/plates or rods with thin section-thickness which is mainly caused by the decrease of thermal conductivities of the new MGs. Recently, we developed a new Laser-foil-printing (LFP) additive manufacturing technology which welds foils, layer by layer, to construct desired 3D structures. With the LFP and Zr-based amorphous foils, 3D, large amorphous structures with complex …

Development Of A Hybrid Manufacturing Process For Precision Metal Parts, Leon Hill, Todd E. Sparks, Frank W. Liou

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

This paper summarizes the research and development of a hybrid manufacturing process to produce fully dense metal parts with CNC-level precision. High performance metals, such as titanium alloys, nickel superalloys, tool steels, stainless steels, etc. can benefit from this process. Coupling the additive and the subtractive processes into a multi-axis workstation, the hybrid process, can produce and repair metal parts with accuracy. The surface quality of the final product is similar to the industrial milling capability. To achieve such a system, issues of the metal deposition process and the automated process planning of the hybrid manufacturing process will be discussed.

Fabricating Zirconia Parts With Organic Support Material By The Ceramic On-Demand Extrusion Process, Wenbin Li, Amir Ghazanfari, Devin Mcmillen, Andrew Scherff, Ming-Chuan Leu, Greg Hilmas

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Ceramic On-Demand Extrusion (CODE) is an extrusion-based additive manufacturing process recently developed for fabricating dense, functional ceramic components. This paper presents a further development of this process and focuses on fabricating 3 mol% yttria-stabilized zirconia (3YSZ) components that cannot be fabricated without using support structures. The 3YSZ paste is deposited through the main nozzle, and a polycaprolactone (PCL) pellet feedstock is melted and deposited through an auxiliary nozzle to build support structures. After a green part is printed and dried, the support structures are removed by heating the part to ~70 ⁰C to melt the PCL. The part is then …

Characterization Of Heat-Affected Powder Generated During Selective Laser Melting Of 304l Stainless Steel Powder, Austin T. Sutton, Caitlin S. Kriewall, Ming-Chuan Leu, Joseph William Newkirk

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

The selective laser melting (SLM) process is an Additive Manufacturing (AM) technique that uses a laser to fuse successive layers of powder into near fully dense components. Due to the large energy input from the laser during processing, vaporization and instabilities in the melt pool occur causing the formation of condensate and laser spatter, collectively known as heat-affected powder. Since heat-affected powder settles into the powder bed, the properties of the unconsolidated powder may be altered compromising its reusability. In this study, characterization of 304L heat-affected powder was performed through particle size distribution measurements, x-ray diffraction, metallography, energy-dispersive spectroscopy mapping, …

Influence Of Gage Length On Miniature Tensile Characterization Of Powder Bed Fabricated 304l Stainless Steel, Sreekar Karnati, Jack L. Hoerchler, Frank W. Liou, Joseph William Newkirk

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Miniature tensile specimens with varying aspect ratios were fabricated from 304L stainless steel (SS) made using powder bed additive manufacturing (AM) process. The tensile characteristics measured from these specimens were analyzed to assess the impact of gage length. The study found no impact upon varying gage length on yield and ultimate strength measurements. However, a significant impact was observed on strain measurements. This data was also used to perform Weibull statistics to estimate the stochastic performance of the material. Fractography was performed to visually identify the types of flaws. A comparative study with specimens fabricated from cold rolled annealed 304 …

Bonding Of 304l Stainless Steel To Cast Iron By Selective Laser Melting, Baily Thomas, Austin T. Sutton, Ming-Chuan Leu, Nikhil Doiphode

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

While cast iron is widely used in industry, a major limitation is the weldability of a dissimilar material onto cast iron due to hot cracking as a result of lack of ductility from graphite flakes. Consequently, a significant amount of preheat is often employed to reduce the cooling rate in the fusion zone, which, however, may lead to distortion of the welded parts. A potential remedy could be the Selective Laser Melting (SLM) process, where only small melt pools are created and thus the overall energy input is reduced. The present paper describes an investigation of the SLM process to …

Fabricating Zirconia Components With Organic Support Material By The Ceramic On-Demand Extrusion Process, Wenbin Li, Amir Ghazanfari, Devin Mcmillen, Andrew Scherff, Ming-Chuan Leu, Greg Hilmas

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Ceramic On-Demand Extrusion (CODE) is an extrusion-based additive manufacturing process recently developed for fabricating dense, functional ceramic components. This paper presents a further development of this process and focuses on fabricating 3 mol% yttria-stabilized zirconia (3YSZ) components that cannot be fabricated without using support structures. The 3YSZ paste is deposited through the main nozzle, and a polycaprolactone (PCL) pellet feedstock is melted and deposited through an auxiliary nozzle to build support structures. After a green part is printed and dried, the support structures are removed by heating the part to ~70°C to melt the PCL. The part is then sintered …

Mechanical Properties Of 304l Parts Made By Laser-Foil-Printing Technology, Chia-Hung Hung, Yiyu Shen, Ming-Chuan Leu, Hai-Lung Tsai

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Laser-Foil-Printing (LFP) is a novel laminated object manufacturing process for metal additive manufacturing. It fabricates three-dimensional metal parts by using a dual-laser system to weld and cut metal foils layer by layer. A main advantage of LFP is the higher cooling rate compared to powder-based laser additive manufacturing processes due to the thermal conductivity difference between foil and powder. This study focuses on the mechanical properties of 304L stainless steel parts built by the LFP process. The experimental results indicate that the yield strength and ultimate tensile strength of LFP fabricated 304L SS parts are higher by 9% and 8% …

Fiber-Fed Laser-Heated Process For Printing Transparent Glass, John M. Hostetler, Jonathan T. Goldstein, Douglas A. Bristow, Robert G. Landers, Edward C. Kinzel

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

This paper presents the Additive Manufacturing (AM) of glass using a fiber-fed process. Glass fiber with a diameter of 100 μm is fed into a laser generated melt pool. A CO₂ laser beam is focused on the intersection between the fiber and the work piece which is positioned on a four-axis computer controlled stage. The laser energy at λ=10.6 μm is directly absorbed by the silica and locally heats the glass above the working point. By carefully controlling the laser power, scan speed, and feed rate, bubble free shapes can be deposited including trusses and basic lenses. Issues unique …

Metallic Components Repair Strategies Using The Hybrid Manufacturing Process, Xinchang Zhang, Wenyuan Cui, Wei Li, Frank W. Liou

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

The hybrid manufacturing process which integrates additive manufacturing with subtractive machining is competitive and promising in component repair. To automate this process, detecting the missing volume and generating the deposition tracks is the key. In this study, strategies for repairing defects on flat and non-flat surfaces were investigated. A cost-effective reverse engineering tool was utilized to reconstruct STL models of damaged objects. Point data of the fracture surface on flat surfaces was obtained to generate the tool path for material building up. For defects on non-flat surfaces, the damaged model was best-fitted with the nominal model. Then both models were …

Review Of Am Simulation Validation Techniques, Aaron Flood, Frank W. Liou

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Due to the complexity of Additive Manufacturing (AM), it can require many trial runs to obtain processing parameters which produce a quality build. Because of this trial and error process, the drive for simulations of AM has grown significantly. Simulations only become useful to researchers if it can be shown that they are true representations of the physical process being simulated. All simulations have different methods of validation to show that they are an accurate representations of the process. This paper explores the various methodologies for validation of laser based metal AM simulations, focusing mainly on the modeling of the …

Investigation Of Build Strategies For A Hybrid Manufacturing Process Progress On Ti-6al-4v, Lei Yan, Leon Hill, Frank W. Liou, Joseph William Newkirk

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

The various processing parameters of a hybrid manufacturing process, including deposition and machining, is being investigated with a Design of Experiment (DoE). The intent was to explore the effect of different build strategies on the final part’s Vickers hardness, tensile test, fatigue life, and microstructure. From this experiment, the processing parameters can be linked to various mechanical properties. This will lead to the ability to create a combination of deposition and machining parameters, which will result in improved mechanical properties.

A Two-Dimensional Simulation Of Grain Structure Growth Within Substrate And Fusion Zone During Direct Metal Deposition, Jingwei Zhang, Wei Li, Frank W. Liou, Joseph William Newkirk

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

In this paper, a predictive model based on a cellular automaton (CA)-finite element (FE) method has been developed to simulate thermal history and microstructure evolution during metal solidification for a laser-based additive manufacturing process. The macroscopic FE calculation that is validated by thermocouple experiment is designed to update the temperature field and a high cooling rate. A cellular automata-finite element (CAFE) method is developed to describe grain growth in the fusion zone. In the mesoscopic CA model, heterogeneous nucleation sites, grain growth orientation and rate, epitaxial growth, remelting of preexisting grains, metal addition, grain competitive growth, and columnar to equiaxed …

Additive Manufacturing Of High Entropy Alloys -- A Review, Wenyuan Cui, Xinchang Zhang, Frank W. Liou

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

High-entropy alloys have attracted increasingly interest due to their unique compositions, microstructures and mechanical properties. Additive manufacturing has been recognized as a promising technology to fabricate the high-entropy alloys in the recent years. The purpose of this paper is to review the current research progress in high-entropy alloys by additive manufacturing process. It will first highlight the important theory of the high-entropy alloys. The next aspect is to summarize current additive manufacturing methods applied for the high entropy alloys. At last, the correlation between the microstructures and the mechanical properties of the high-entropy alloys will be examined and discussed.

Defects Classification Of Laser Metal Deposition Using Acoustic Emission Sensor, Haythem Gaja, Frank W. Liou

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Laser metal deposition (LMD) is an advanced additive manufacturing (AM) process used to build or repair metal parts layer by layer for a range of different applications. Any presence of deposition defects in the part produced causes change in the mechanical properties and might cause failure to the part. In this work, defects monitoring system was proposed to detect and classify defects in real time using an acoustic emission (AE) sensor and an unsupervised pattern recognition analysis. Time domain and frequency domain, and relevant descriptors were used in the classification process to improve the characterization and the discrimination of the …

Relating Processing Of Selective Laser Melted Structures To Their Material And Modal Properties, Nicholas E. Capps, James S. Urban, Brian M. West, Cody S. Lough, Adriane Repogle, Troy Hartwig, Ben Brown, Douglas A. Bristow, Robert G. Landers, Edward C. Kinzel

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Selective Laser Melting (SLM) creates metal parts by fusing powder layer-by-layer. It provides significant design flexibility and the possibility of low-volume production. The engineering properties of the printed metal are a function of the local thermal history. This creates challenges for validating Additively Manufactured (AM) parts. This paper correlates the engineering properties (density, modulus, yield strength and ultimate strength) for tensile test specimens created with different process parameters with the resonant frequencies determined using modal testing. The paper shows that yield and ultimate strengths for these specimens can be determined using modal analysis.

Effect Of Optimizing Particle Size In Laser Metal Deposition With Blown Pre-Mixed Powders, Wei Li, Jingwei Zhang, Xinchang Zhang, Sreekar Karnati, Frank W. Liou

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Functionally Graded Material (FGM) is often fabricated by Laser metal deposition with pre-mixed multiple powders (PMM-powder). Since the supplied PMM-powder directly affects FGM’s composition, investigation on PMM-powder’s property is greatly needed. This paper employed experimental method to observe an important problem: PMM-powder separation in fabricating FGM. A novel particle size optimization method was introduced as solution to eliminate the powder separation. Pre-mixed pure Cu and 4047 Al powders were used to do two experiments. The first experiment result disclosed the existence of powder separation. By optimizing the particle size, the PMM-powder separation was effectively solved in the second experiment result.

Thermal Modeling Of 304l Stainless Steel Selective Laser Melting, Lan Li, Cody S. Lough, Adriane Repogle, Douglas A. Bristow, Robert G. Landers, Edward C. Kinzel

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

This paper describes the continuum thermal modeling of the Selective Laser Melting (SLM) process for 304L stainless steel using Abaqus. Temperature dependent thermal properties are obtained from literature and incorporated into the model capturing the change from powder to fully dense stainless steel. The thermal model predicts the temperature history for multi-track scans under different process parameters (laser power, effective scanning speed, hatch spacing) which is used to extract the melt-pool size, solidification rate, and temperature gradients. These are compared to experimental results obtained from a Renishaw AM250 in terms of the melt pool size, grain structure, and cell spacing. …

Effect Of Sparse-Build Internal Structure On Performance Of Fused Deposition Modeling Tools Under Pressure, S. Meng, L. Mason, Gregory Taylor, X. Wang, Ming-Chuan Leu, K. Chandrashekhara, Mike Matlack, James Castle

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Two different approaches to design a sparse-build tool for fabrication by the fused deposition modeling (FDM) process are compared. One approach uses a 2D lattice structure and the other approach is inspired by topology optimization. Ultem 9085 is used as the material, and the amount of material used to build the tool is kept constant to ensure a fair comparison. A solid tool is also included in the comparison. The performance of the tool under uniform pressure is simulated using finite element analysis (FEA) and the accuracy of the FEA results is verified by comparing them with experimentally measured data …

Modal Response As A Validation Technique For Metal Parts Fabricated With Selective Laser Melting, Joshua D. Pribe, Brian M. West, Michelle L. Gegel, Troy Hartwig, Toby Lunn, Ben Brown, Douglas A. Bristow, Robert G. Landers, Edward C. Kinzel

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

This paper investigates modal analysis as a validation technique for additively manufactured parts. The Frequency Response Function (FRF) is dependent on both the geometry and the material properties of the part as well as the presence of any defects. This allows the FRF to serve as a “fingerprint” for a given part of given quality. Once established, the FRF can be used to qualify subsequently printed parts. This approach is particularly attractive for metal parts, due to the lower damping as well as use in high-value applications where failure is unacceptable. To evaluate the efficacy of the technique, tensile specimens …