Elementum 3D, a leading developer and supplier of metal additive manufacturing (AM) advanced materials, print parameters, and services, announced that America Makes has selected Elementum 3D to Lead “Proliferation of AM Aluminium Alloy Material Datasets” Team. The Elementum 3D proposal to qualify its commercially available, high-strength A7050-RAM2 aluminium additive manufacturing feedstock was selected for funding under the “Proliferation of AM Materials Datasets” project call.
The program’s goal is to generate material property datasets with high statistical power for industrially relevant aluminium and nickel alloys, with a focus on accelerating the adoption of additive manufacturing in the American aerospace, automotive, defence, and energy industries. With these data sets in place, engineers can confidently use these materials in critical applications with a very low tolerance for failure.
Proliferation of AM Aluminium Alloy Material Datasets
Elementum 3Dwill incorporate products and services from additive manufacturing software, hardware, and researchers such as Battelle, Castheon, Inc., Dyndrite Corporation, Eaton Corporation, EOS North America, Incodema, Inc., National Institute for Aviation Research, Product Evaluation Systems, Inc., The Ohio State University Centre for Design and Manufacturing Excellence, and Westmoreland Mechanical Testing and Research.
“America Makes’ push to advance AM material datasets is monumental for the manufacturing industry. It stimulates greater confidence in high-strength aluminium print quality and broadens the AM supply chain. We are excited to join forces with the other awardees. Together, our expansive knowledge and expertise in materials development establishes the future of AM materials.”
– Dr. Jacob Nuechterlein, President and Founder, Elementum 3D
Manufacturers consistently express a desire for lightweight, high-strength aluminium materials that provide excellent fatigue and stress corrosion cracking resistance for rapid on-demand components. This is why Elementum 3D’s printable A7050-RAM2 is so highly regarded, earning the gold medal in the inaugural “Material Hurdles” event at the 2020 US Air Force Advanced Manufacturing Olympics.
This project was funded by the Office of the Under Secretary of Defence, Research and Engineering Manufacturing Technology Office (OSD(R&E)), as well as the Air Force Research Laboratory. The programme provides Elementum 3D with project cost reimbursements of up to $2,875,000. Elementum 3D and its consortium partners will contribute at least half of this amount as cost share, for a total project effort of more than $4.2 million.
The results of this America Makes programme will be available to both America Makes members and the United States government.
Project Partners
Members of the diverse project team understand the significance of this America Makes-funded initiative.
“Most industries are just beginning to see the opportunities provided by additive manufacturing. Broader adoption of additive manufacturing in critical industries like defence, energy, and aerospace has been hampered by lack of public, traceable, statistically significant data sets that characterize high value materials. We look forward to working alongside Elementum 3D and America Makes to reverse this paradigm. We are helping to proliferate knowledge that enables new solutions through the adoption of additive manufacturing.”
– Steve Walton, Head of Product, Dyndrite
As part of this project, Dyndrite will provide copies of its LPBF Pro software, which will allow for rapid build preparation, materials and process development, and report generation for the EOS metal 3D printing machines chosen for this effort. LPBF Pro will largely automate the process of creating additive material data sets, which was previously a tedious manual task. The software will also improve the process of communicating methodology and producing repeatable results, which has traditionally been prone to user error.
Yash Parikh, process engineering consultant at EOS expressed his support saying, “We congratulate Elementum 3D on their selection for the America Makes Proliferation of AM Material Datasets, and EOS is proud to play a significant supporting role in the initiative. We are dedicated to the project through our cost-sharing pledge and steadfast commitment to realizing the desired production results for customers and are thrilled to embark on this project as an esteemed research partner, with a focus on providing guidance on qualification and best practices to expedite it.”
Castheon, an ADDMAN Group company, is pleased to provide statistically relevant data for part design using Aluminium A7050-RAM2. Aerospace clients frequently require high-strength aluminium alloys to facilitate the integration of functional and structural components.
Mark Saberton, ADDMAN’s chief technical officer, emphasizes, “As Castheon expands manufacturing operations to address the increasing demand for Additive Manufacturing, the expansion of data sets for this high-performance material stands as a significant milestone. This will empower our customers to expedite the development of innovative designs and system integration.”
Eaton also expressed excitement about collaborating with Elementum 3D to create a design-allowable dataset for their A7050-RAM2 material. By generating allowables based on MMPDS’s new C/D basis guidelines, Eaton can develop superior additive manufacturing solutions to some of our most difficult design challenges more quickly and cost effectively.
Eaton has extensive experience developing and deploying statistically based material allowables for a wide range of metal additive manufacturing processes, including L-PBF, EB-PBF, and cold spray for aluminium, titanium, and stainless steel materials. Eaton intends to provide guidance on aerospace product qualification expectations for both military and commercial platforms, including regulatory bodies such as the FAA and EASA.
