Materials and Additive Manufacturing : Teaming for the Win
The manufacturing landscape of tomorrow needs to address global challenges in environmental sustainability, supply chain resilience, and cost-efficiency. Metal additive manufacturing processes play a significant role in addressing these challenges holistically, from raw materials to the final part. While much has been made of the flexibility inherent in metal additive manufacturing, and the oncoming era in materials development, it is still in the future. Today, there are still few metal powder alloys in use, made by a 90-year old technology that has poor yield and results in significant CO2 emissions. To solve all these challenges, two things are necessary:
A multidisciplinary team who can deeply understand the materials science and processing relationship and use all of the available technology advances
Flexible, low-cost, and environmentally friendly powder production approaches
These two approaches, in tandem with intelligent and fast material adoption strategies, have proven to be a winner. The Barnes Global Advisors (TBGA), Metal Powder Works (MPW), and the Multi-Scale Additive Manufacturing Lab (MSAM) have partnered up to do just that.