2024 Annual International Solid Freeform Fabrication Symposium (SFF Symp 2024): Data, Economics, and Education II
Program Organizers: Joseph Beaman, University of Texas at Austin

Tuesday 1:30 PM
August 13, 2024
Room: 412
Location: Hilton Austin

Session Chair: Chukwuzubelu Ufodike, Texas A&M University

1:30 PM
Integrating Process Data in Motion for Additive Manufacturing Industrialization: Chen-Wei Yang¹; Alexander Kuan¹; Sheng-Yen Li¹; Yan Lu¹; Joshua Lubell¹; Fan-Tien Cheng²; Haw-Ching Yang³; ¹National Institute of Standards and Technology; ²Institute of Manufacturing Information and Systems, National Cheng Kung University; ³National Kaohsiung University of Science and Technology
     Researchers utilize in-process monitoring techniques to track Metal Additive Manufacturing (AM) stability. Real-time data analytics and control can significantly enhance final product quality. However, integrating high-speed, high-volume data poses challenges, especially processing multi-modality data for feedback control. Additionally, there is a demand to integrate AM systems with manufacturing operation management for scale-up adaptions.We introduce the NIST AM Data Integration Testbench, aiming to establish an open platform empowering researchers to evaluate AM data integration methods, models, message exchange, and process control functionalities. The testbench equipped with in-situ monitoring emulators, enhances data flow efficiency through high-speed data streaming, automated metadata curation and big data archiving in cloud storage. It also features an edge-computing system for real-time data analysis and control. To facilitate AM industrialization, the testbench integrates a Manufacturing Execution System (MES). Leveraging this testbench for testing various data integration methods can advance AM technology.

1:50 PM
Overview of Key Technoeconomic Performance Metrics for Large-Format Directed Energy Deposition Metal Additive Manufacturing: Adam Stevens¹; Paritosh Mhatre¹; Lauren Heinrich¹; Christopher Masuo¹; Alexandra Shanafield¹; Thomas Feldhausen¹; Brian Post¹; ¹Oak Ridge National Laboratory
    Large-format metal directed energy deposition (DED) additive manufacturing (AM) methods are increasingly being evaluated for domestic production of high-mix, low-volume casting replacements critical to the energy and defense industries. Maximizing the return of future research efforts and industry adoption hinges on understanding the technoeconomic (TEA, e.g., manufacturing cost) and life-cycle (LCA, e.g., embodied emissions) analyses of each process compared to existing conventional manufacturing processes. We present TEA and LCA metrics (e.g., build rate and volume, resolution, feedstock cost, specific embodied energy and CO2e) for several mature (e.g., wire-arc, laser blown-powder, hot-wire) and emerging DED processes located at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory Manufacturing Demonstration Facility, draw comparisons to conventional manufacturing processes, and highlight areas of opportunity for future development.

2:10 PM
STEAM Powered: An Argument for the Robust Integration of Artistic and Engineering Practices in Design for Additive Manufacturing: Nicholas Meisel¹; Aaron Knochel¹; Sarah Zappe¹; ¹Pennsylvania State University
    Additive manufacturing (AM) has been widely integrated in engineering institutions as it can enable designs of seemingly infinite complexity. Despite this potential, research has demonstrated the difficulty in encouraging engineering students to think beyond traditional manufacturing boundaries. Undergraduate programs in the arts have likewise embraced AM for the complex artistic concepts it enables. But, when contrasted against engineers, art students may be more inclined to leverage the geometric freedom of AM by virtue of fundamental differences in which creativity manifests in STEM practitioners and artists. As such, there is a need for the robust convergence of STEM and Arts disciplines in an undergraduate STEAM design framework, which encourages engineering students to adopt arts-based practices to create new, innovative, products outside the realm of conventional design concepts. In this paper, the authors make an argument for such a framework, grounding it in fundamental epistemic practices within both engineering and artistic design.

2:30 PM
Additive Manufacturing Can Help Answer Structure-function Questions in Biology: Dhruv Bhate¹; ¹Arizona State University
    Much in the way materials scientists are concerned with process-structure-property relationships, so too are biologists with the connections between genetics, structure, and function. However, the relationships in biology are of greater complexity than they are in materials science. Even limiting scope to structure-function relationships alone, unraveling these connections with a high degree of confidence is challenging because of the multi-scale nature of the geometries involved, and their adaptation over millions of years for multiple functions. This is where we propose additive manufacturing has a role to play, demonstrating this for three of our recent studies on honeycombs, sea sponges and branching structures. We also review and categorize similar work by others and discuss the role of analytical and computational modeling. In so doing, we aim to identify general principles for conducting work of this nature and encouraging the greater use of additive manufacturing for structure-function studies.