ISE Seminar: Printing Outside the Box: Realizing Multi-Functional Products with Additive Manufacturing Process

Details

Speaker
Dr. Christopher Williams is the L.S. Randolph Professor and the Electro-Mechanical Corporation Senior Faculty Fellow in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Virginia Tech. He is the Director of the Design, Research, and Education for Additive Manufacturing Systems (DREAMS) Laboratory. He is the former Director of the Macromolecules Innovation Institute and holds affiliate faculty appointments in the Department of Engineering Education and the Department of Material Science & Engineering.

Title
Printing Outside the Box: Realizing Multi-Functional Products with Multi-Material, Multi-Modal, and Multi-Axis Additive Manufacturing Processes

Abstract
Additive Manufacturing (AM) has been often hyped as an all-in-one manufacturing process capable of directly fabricating end-use products within a single step. However, this holds AM to a higher standard than all other manufacturing processes, which require additional processing steps to refine material properties, surface finish, etc. In addition, this approach falsely places constraints on AM process capabilities to be confined within a literal box. Such constraints ultimately limit the application of AM’s layer-wise fabrication approach, which empowers engineers to selectively place (multiple-) materials to realize products that satisfy multiple functions and design objectives. To fully realize the potential of AM, the processes are in need of further advancements in material selection, performance, and process capability, which can be aided by additional post-processing steps.
The aim of this talk is to highlight how multi-functionality can be achieved by expanding our view of AM processing to expand outside of the printer’s box to incorporate multiple AM modalities and post-processing steps to impart additional functionality to printed parts. Examples covered in this talk include (i) AM of copper foams via binder jetting, (ii) printing of hybrid electronics via photopolymerization of fully-aromatic polyimides, (iii) composite structures featuring optimized topology and toolpathing via multi-axis robotic deposition, and (iv) autonomous robotic AM of complete mechatronic systems.