IMTS 2024 Conference: HEAL-IT: Hybrid-Manufacturing Enabled Agility and Longevity of Industrial Tooling

Wednesday September 11 11:00 AM CST
IMTS42 Room W192-C

Learn about the presentation
Hybrid manufacturing enables the integration of additive and subtractive processing for the manufacture and repair of complex shapes with multi-material structures which are traditionally unmanufacturable. With tooling wear and failure, tools must be decommissioned, rebuilt (using manual welding processes) and machined to be recommissioned. Manual rebuild processes rely on skilled technicians whose numbers have significantly decreased along with the decline of the tool and die industry in recent decades. The reliability and performance of the material, tool, and ultimately the resultant production operation is uncertain without rigorous and detailed inspection and certification of hand modifications, which adds to lead time and losses in productivity. While most tooling repairs to-date have been manually performed, studies have been performed using AM techniques such as directed energy deposition (DED) to both repair and create inserts for existing tools. Hybrid approaches, in which additive and conventional subtractive processes are interleaved, allow for additional workflows that combine all the required elements within the same work volume, along with advanced toolpath capabilities that enable true 5-axis printing and finishing. Additionally, hybrid systems provide the opportunity for embedded sensing that can perform in-situ data collection for rapid performance verification, qualification, and certification of repairs. This session will demonstrate how hybrid manufacturing was leveraged to repair the threads of a bottle mold. Specifically, the speakers will (1) discuss lessons learned from this demonstrated process, (2) provide insight towards the state of the art of 5-axis CAM programming for DED, and (3) present ongoing technology developments in the field of hybrid manufacturing.

Meet your presenters
David Bourdages has been working in the manufacturing industry since 1997 and at OPEN MIND Technologies AG, developer of hyperMILL, since 2013. Product manager for the additive manufacturing module since 2015, David has a strong technical background in manufacturing and he likes using his creativity to solve manufacturing issues. He is collaborating with research centers, universities and industries located all over the world. Since 2019, he has been working with the ORNL Team to find solutions for issues faced while developing AM technology for the U.S. market.

Lauren Heinrich is a technical staff member who provides research support with her experience in hybrid manufacturing in the Manufacturing Science Division at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. She received her bachelor's in mechanical engineering from Lipscomb University in 2020 then completed her master's degree in mechanical engineering with a focus on wire arc additive manufacturing processing from Georgia Institute of Technology in 2022. Heinrich started at ORNL in 2022 and her work at the Department of Energy's Manufacturing Demonstration Facility consists of utilizing hybrid manufacturing, a combination of additive and subtractive (machining) manufacturing, to further support manufacturing in the tool and die, aerospace, energy systems, and automotive industries. Heinrich’s current research has focused on hybrid manufacturing of tooling inserts with conformal fluid channels, the repair of tooling, and multi-material tooling manufacturing strategies.