C2I 2020: Manufacturing technology shortlist

Whilst sectors like medical have been keen adopters of metal additive manufacturing technology uptake in the aerospace industry has been slower.

The £14m, MTC led  DRAMA project is attempting to change this by developing a set of national assets that can be used to help UK supply chain companies build capability in metal additive manufacturing.

This project was the winner of the aerospace & defence category.

Powder bed metal additive manufacturing (AM) processes typically use up to 20kg of powder for each 1kg of manufactured part, so AM users must be able to effectively handle and recycle vast amounts of powder during the process. In the current generation of AM machines, the powder handling equipment provides a potential risk to powder traceability and powder quality.

FIND OUT MORE ABOUT THIS YEAR'S MANUFACTURING TECHNOLOGY WINNER

PowderCleanse, which is in its final stages, set out to develop and demonstrate an effective solution for powder management which utilises digital connectivity to monitor and control every aspect of the process. Key innovations are being developed for metal powder sieving, online process monitoring, foreign body contamination detection and fully enclosed powder handling environments.

The project is unique within the industry in that it takes what is deemed an off-line process, powder testing in a lab, and brings the critical component to be ‘on-line’ and potentially ‘in-line’ which shortens the powder processing cycle time.

https://vimeo.com/498029205/9f443bcb6e

Whilst the rise of additive manufacturing technology is already being used across a number of sectors and applications, its impact and application has arguably been limited by traditional engineering mindsets and design methodologies that prevent manufacturers from fully exploiting its flexibility.

This project – a collaboration between Imperial College London, TOffeeAM ltd and energy company Baker Hughes - set out to address this through the development of  topology optimisation (TO) software that allows engineers to exploit the geometrical freedom offered by AM.

https://vimeo.com/498029459/1f18ca1282

For the project, the group focussed on the development of a new TO algorithm that could be used to design and build a heat exchanger with turbulent flows. This is of particular interest for critical application in gas turbines where turbines blades are in a harsh working environment.

The maximum temperature on the air can exceed 2000K and every single rotor blade has to withstand high mechanical stresses, equivalent to the weight of about 100 mid size cars. Consequently, coolant channels are added inside the blades to keep the temperature in a safe range which can guarantee the correct functioning and prevent premature failures. The results of first phase of this project has been included in the new TO software of TOffeeAM ltd.

The lack of a satisfactory joining solution has deterred designers from specifying PP (polypropylene and polyethylene) based composite materials in many areas of manufacturing, meaning that more expensive materials are often employed to bypass the complexity of the joining process.

https://vimeo.com/498028790/8f8a40bdf2

This hasn’t gone unnoticed by Powdertech Surface Science, which was a participant in the SOLMAC (Structural Optimisation using Light Metals and Affordable Composites) along with Ariel Motors, MacNeillie (Babcock), and Stalcom.

The aim of the project was to take materials and processes proven at a system level and in non-primary structures and apply them to the production of the primary body structure of the Ariel Hipercar.

Specifically, novel combined pre-and post-assembly surface treatment of aluminium sheet and extruded beam sections were integrated with affordable thermoplastic panels.

By creating hybrid material sub-assemblies that were then joined using cold-cure adhesive and mechanical fasteners, a lightweight solution was delivered that exhibited significant performance, cost and environmental benefits.

The project provided an opportunity to refine the PowderBondPP process developed to enable the joining of polypropylene to aluminium, and was successfully used to make the five sub-assemblies that formed the structure of the tub.

The engineering challenge set forth by the design team, Stalcom, to deliver the features required by the OEM, Ariel, were key in demanding a novel approach to joining dissimilar materials. Powdertech and Stalcom have since collaborated on a further research project (named PBApps) to characterise the bond durability and generate a dataset and demonstrator to be able to take the solution to market.

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