Beth Cotter

Rio Tinto Metal Powders (RTMP), a subsidiary of the multinational mining company Rio Tinto, has powder metallurgy customers in Canada and abroad who will directly benefit from this project.

Multi-Scale Additive Manufacturing (MSAM) Lab is one of the largest research and development additive manufacturing facilities in the world, hosted at the University of Waterloo in Canada.

• Metal AM continues to see global growth; however, manufacturers are cautious due to high upfront costs and uncertainty of reliable part production.
• The goal was to reduce costs while enabling efficient steel alloy use in commercial and industrial AM, particularly prototyping and spare part production for automotive and other industries.

• RTMP prototyped several approaches to produce AM grade powder suitable for PBBJ and LPBF, which are expected to be scalable for existing production.
• The print recipe developed by MSAM enables printing on current generation systems and achieves target density and hardness, thereby reducing costs for AM adoption.

• The novel material will facilitate AM adoption by new users, as well as integration into existing commercial and industrial operations. RTMP customers can expect cost savings in initial investment, supply chain and overall manufacturing expenses.
• This project has provided an “adoption roadmap” for low-risk metal AM technology adoption, opening new market domains for RTMP and its customers.

Xiris Automation is an SME in Burlington, ON with 30 staff that specializes in manufacturing optical systems for quality control (QC) to enable their customers to detect and interpret quality defects in manufactured goods.

Multi-Scale Additive Manufacturing (MSAM) Lab is one of the largest research and development additive manufacturing facilities in the world, hosted at the University of Waterloo in Canada.

• Metal additive manufacturing (AM) is prone to QC challenges due to its inherent complexity.
• Xiris suspected overlap in their cameras used in welding QC and the potential for use in AM.
• This project targeted improving melt pool monitoring using high dynamic range (HDR) cameras since there is a relationship between the melt pool and overall AM part quality,.

• Using a direct energy deposition (DED) powder fed laser fusion system, MSAM developed an analytical plugin to monitor and model melt pool geometry using advanced image processing techniques.
• The plugin will be used with existing Xiris software and HDR cameras.

• Through its relationship with MSAM, Xiris gained knowledge of AM-specific QC and related image analysis/processing challenges.
• Xiris has invested not only financial and in-kind support, but also engineering expertise on this project to expand into the AM market space.

TBGA collectively brings over 100 years of  additive manufacturing experience through a diverse range of high quality specialists to advise and solve problems associated with maturing & industrializing additive manufacturing.

Multi-Scale Additive Manufacturing (MSAM) Lab is one of the largest research and development additive manufacturing facilities in the world, hosted at the University of Waterloo in Canada.

The Rapid Sustainment Office (RSO) of the U.S. Air Force organized the inaugural Advanced Manufacturing Olympics (AMO) in October 2020 to seek identify, apply, and scale technology essential to the operation and sustainment of the U.S. Air Force. One of the four major events within the inaugural AMO was the Materials Hurdles challenge. The goal of this challenge was to identify and demonstrate new aluminium materials that will further the additive manufacturing (AM) industry. The emphasis was on the ability to identify new high strength aluminium alloys that can push the envelope of materials currently used by the U.S. Air Force. The incoming applications were judged based on the ingenuity and ease of use of the proposed solutions.

There were numerous applications from multiple North American organizations to enter this event, out of which our Multi-Scale Additive Manufacturing team in collaboration with The Barnes Global Advisors (TBGA) was selected to be one of the 10 finalists. The U.S. Air Force typically deploys AM Ti-6Al-4V (a titanium alloy) to substitute for conventional high strength aluminium alloys such as Al 7075 or Al 7050. This substitution is primarily due to tendency of the conventional high strength aluminum alloys to crack during AM.

The team of Sagar Patel and Mihaela Vlasea (from MSAM) and John Barnes and Kevin Slattery (from TBGA) proposed the AM of Scalmalloy^® using the laser powder bed fusion (LPBF) technology for the challenge. The challenge kicked off on July 31^st following which there was a timeline of less than 3 weeks for our collaborative team to source the powder and complete the manufacturing of numerous artifacts by August 19. The powders, supplied to us by Toyal America, arrived at MSAM on August 12, and we managed to complete the entire chain of process parameter development and printing artifacts within a week to ship samples out on time. The use of physics-driven processing diagrams, temperature prediction models, and beam path planning technologies developed by our group through previously published efforts aided us to meet the challenge requirements successfully.

The artifacts by the 10 finalists were then judged by the U.S. Air Force for tensile performance, buildability, surface roughness, porosity, microstructure, and compression performance along with considerations given to the novelty of the material and ingenuity of the manufacturing solution proposed. Our team was humbled with a silver medal!

Multi-Scale Additive Manufacturing (MSAM) Lab is one of the largest research and development additive manufacturing facilities in the world, hosted at the University of Waterloo in Canada.

The purpose of this project has been to leverage the flexibility and freedom given by additive manufacturing (AM) to redesign a golf club. Conventional manufacturing methods are not economical for developing customizable clubs due to tooling and machining costs which amortized across thousands of golf clubs in a typical manufacturing run. Manufacturers typically produce just a few different models targeted at golfers of different abilities. Leveraging the capabilities of AM, clubs can be customized for an individual golfer. This work seeks to build and test a golf clubhead made entirely using AM.

There have been two parts to this project that were both done in parallel.

On one side, a club was customized based on an individual golfer’s parameters. In the last decade, golf equipment manufacturers have started creating adjustable clubs. These typically allow the golfer to add or remove weights and adjust loft. This limited range of adjustability causes some golfers to use hosel weights and lead tape for finer tuning. With AM, manufacturers can develop custom made-to-order golf club designs and manufacture them in just a few days.

On the other hand a conventional golf club has been redesigned. The structure of the iron clubhead was determined using modern design techniques. Topological optimisation was used to generate an internal lattice that minimised the weight of the club while maintaining a threshold of stiffness. The resulting model represents a design with the minimum necessary material.

Both golf clubs were successfully printed within the MSAM facility: laser powder bed fusion (LPBF), a class of AM processes, was selected to manufacture the golf clubs out of Ti-64.

Borrum Energy Solutions (BES) designs, manufactures, assembles, and sells small wind turbines. BES is interested in enhancing designs to ensure wind turbines operate reliably in harsh and cold northern Canadian environments. Wind turbine energy is a viable source of clean energy for such environments, whereas solar or geothermal would be less reliable year-round. BES’ mission is to enable single dwellings to generate their own energy to partially offset the diesel-based electricity, thus reducing costs and greenhouse emissions.

Multi-Scale Additive Manufacturing (MSAM) Lab is one of the largest research and development additive manufacturing facilities in the world, hosted at the University of Waterloo in Canada.

• Borrum seeks to improve their electric power generator performance for their wind turbines by optimizing the electro-magnetic performance

• Borrum Energy partnered with the Multi-Scale Additive Manufacturing (MSAM) Laboratory to undertake electro-magnetic performance optimization
• The production of rotor and stator components is under development using a variety of ferrous alloys (Fe-Si, Fe, maraging steel grades) as well as the production of permanent magnets into complex shapes.
• By applying additive manufacturing techniques, MSAM and Borrum have developed new rotor, stator, and electro-magnet geometries that are not-achievable via conventional manufacturing approaches.

• The technology has the potential to yield significant impacts for wind power generation
• AM is a potential disruptive driver in the production of custom power generation devices
• The technology has potential for further application to advance the electrification of vehicles in Canada and beyond.
• The technology is presently targeted to assist with power generation for indigenous or isolated communities

WatCAR Manufacturing comprises seven research groups with state-of-the-art facilities and world-class research expertise in advanced materials, forming, joining, computational modeling, performance testing, and cutting-edge production methods to promote lightweighting and production efficiency without compromising safety. These seven research groups collectively form the most comprehensive academic research and development facility in North America for vehicle lightweighting.

• This industry partnership represents a vertically-integrated supply chain comprising a materials supplier, parts supplier and automotive assembler, all of whom operate major manufacturing plants in Ontario.
• The AMC-Waterloo “Forming and Crash Lab” is the largest university research lab in North America addressing both manufacturing and crashworthiness.

• The front structure of a car is engineered to crumple during a head-on collision to dissipate energy and protect occupants.
• Current steel strength levels in the front crumple zone are limited to 800 MPa to avoid failure of the structure.

• Major collaborative research effort was undertaken to develop a full-scale prototype using ArcelorMittal’s new Ductibor® 1000-AS alloy.
• Extensive material testing and computer simulation by Waterloo researchers was used to design a new front structure to safely absorb crash energy.
• A full-scale demonstrator structure was fabricated using material supplied by ArcelorMittal, tooling fabricated by Magna, with assembly of the structure by Honda. The hot stamped components were fabricated at Waterloo.
• The 1000 MPa demonstrator structure – an industry first – was successfully tested using Waterloo’s crash test facility

• This technology represents a first prototype front side frame fabricated and tested using steel with 1000 MPa strength.
• Component weight reductions of over 20% contribute to (i) meeting fuel consumption and emission targets and (ii) enabling EVs by offsetting battery weight.
• ArcelorMittal is upgrading their lines to fabricate this hot stamped alloy in Hamilton. Magna manufactures hot stamped parts at several plants in the province and Honda assembles these components in Alliston, Ontario.