Scaling Up metal additive manufacturing process to fabricate molds for composite manufacturing

Journal Article · Sat Jan 25 00:00:00 UTC 2020 · Additive Manufacturing

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.addma.2020.101093 · OSTI ID:1607191

Hassen, Ahmed Arabi  ^[1]; Noakes, Mark  ^[1]; Nandwana, Peeyush  ^[1]; Kim, Seokpum  ^[1]; Kunc, Vlastimil  ^[1]; Vaidya, Uday ^[2]; Love, Lonnie  ^[1]; Nycz, Andrzej  ^[1]

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1. Oak Ridge National Lab. (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States)
2. Univ. of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN (United States)

Direct Energy Deposition (DED) systems are currently used to repair and maintain existing parts in the aerospace and automotive industries. This paper discusses an effort to scale up the DED technique in order to Additively Manufacture (AM) molds and dies used in the composite manufacturing industry. The US molds and dies market has been in a rapid decline over the last decade due to outsourcing to non-US entities. Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), Wolf Robotics and Lincoln Electric have developed a Metal Big Area Additive Manufacturing (MBAAM) system that uses a high deposition rate and a low-cost wire feedstock material. In this work we used the MBAAM system with a mild steel wire, ER70S-6, to fabricate a compression molding mold for composite structures used in automotive and mass-transit applications. In addition, the mechanical properties of the AM structure were investigated, and it was found that the MBAAM process delivers parts with high planar isotropic behavior. The paper investigates the microstructure and grain of the printed articles to confirm the roots of the observed planar isotropic properties. Here, the manufactured AM mold was used to fabricate 50 composite parts with no observed mold deformations.

• Research Organization: Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE)
• Grant/Contract Number: AC05-00OR22725
• OSTI ID: 1607191
• Journal Information: Additive Manufacturing, Journal Name: Additive Manufacturing Journal Issue: C Vol. 32; ISSN 2214-8604
• Publisher: ElsevierCopyright Statement
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English