Intertek, U.K., a leading total quality assurance provider to industries worldwide, has expanded its materials testing capabilities with the opening of a new lab at its Transportation Technologies facility in Plymouth, Michigan.
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Researchers have successfully grown bacterial cells within sand-based construction materials, marking a significant advance in biodesign, which combines biological and architectural innovations to create more sustainable building materials. By integrating living organisms into construction, this approach aims to transform how structures are designed and built. Cyanobacteria, known for their unique biological properties, have the potential to solidify inorganic materials like CO2, highlighting the immense value of incorporating living systems into industrial processes, particularly in the construction sector.
The process explored involves the biological deposition of bacteria – such as cyanobacterial calcium carbonate precipitation – and its integration with a robotic deposition, namely a sand-based biomixture, within an architectural biofabrication workflow.
After successfully growing two bacterial strains in potential sand-based construction materials, the researchers used microbiological protocols, such as optical density and fluorescence measurements, to follow bacterial growth and activity. This was done with the larger goal of harvesting light through photosynthesis and harnessing it to CO2 deposition and the sedimentation of calcium carbonate for strengthening sand-based construction components.
Ultimately, the researchers managed to outline a robotic deposition system for sand-based mixtures.
The paper was co-authored by researchers at the Technion Israel Institute of Technology, in Haifa, Israel, in the Faculty of Architecture and Town Planning and the Faculty of Biotechnology and Food Engineering.
For more information: Research Directions: Biotechnology Design
Image: Scientists are revolutionizing construction by incorporating cyanobacteria into sand-based materials. This biodesign approach enhances sustainability and structural strength while introducing eco-friendly innovations.
Researchers at the University of Sydney Nano Institute have made a significant advance in molecular robotics by developing custom-designed and programmable nanostructures using DNA origami, an innovative method that leverages the natural folding power of DNA to create new and useful biological structures. This approach has potential applications in targeted drug delivery systems, responsive materials, and energy-efficient optical signal processing. As a proof-of-concept, the researchers created over 50 nanoscale objects, including a “nano-dinosaur,” a “dancing robot,” and a mini-Australia that is 150 nanometers wide, a thousand times narrower than a human hair.
The research, led by first author Dr. Minh Tri Luu and research team leader Dr. Shelley Wickham, focuses on the creation of modular DNA origami “voxels” that can be assembled into complex three-dimensional structures. (Where a pixel is two-dimensional, a voxel is realized in 3D.)
These programmable nanostructures can be tailored for specific functions, allowing for rapid prototyping of diverse configurations. This flexibility is crucial for developing nanoscale robotic systems that can perform tasks in synthetic biology, nanomedicine and materials science.
Dr. Wickham, who holds a joint position with the Schools of Chemistry and Physics in the Faculty of Science, said, “The results are a bit like using Meccano, the children’s engineering toy, or building a chain-like cat’s cradle. But instead of macroscale metal or string, we use nanoscale biology to build robots with huge potential.”
Dr. Luu said, “We’ve created a new class of nanomaterials with adjustable properties, enabling diverse applications—from adaptive materials that change optical properties in response to the environment to autonomous nanorobots designed to seek out and destroy cancer cells.”
To assemble the voxels, the team incorporate additional DNA strands on to the exterior of the nanostructures, with the new strands acting as programmable binding sites.
Dr. Luu said, “These sites act like Velcro with different colors—designed so that only strands with matching ‘colors’ (in fact, complementary DNA sequences) can connect.”
He said this innovative approach allows precise control over how voxels bind to each other, enabling the creation of customizable, highly specific architectures.
One of the most exciting applications of this technology is its potential to create nanoscale robotic boxes capable of delivering drugs directly to targeted areas within the body.
By using DNA origami, researchers can design these nanobots to respond to specific biological signals, ensuring medications are released only when and where they are needed. This targeted approach could enhance the effectiveness of cancer treatments while minimizing side effects.
In addition to drug delivery, the researchers are exploring the development of new materials that can change properties in response to environmental stimuli. For instance, these materials could be engineered to be responsive to higher loads or alter their structural characteristics based on changes in temperature or acidic (pH) levels.
Such responsive materials have the potential to transform medical, computing and electronics industries.
For more information: Science Robotics
Image: Dr. Minh Luu aligning and focusing an image on the Sydney Microscopy and Microanalysis transmission electron microscope to view a DNA origami nanostructure. Credit: Stefanie Zingsheim/University of Sydney
The honor of Fellow of the Society was established to provide recognition to members for distinguished contributions in the field of materials science and engineering, and to develop a broadly based forum for technical and professional leaders to serve as advisors to the Society. The deadline for submission is November 30.
Continue readingMichael Bartlett, an assistant professor in Virginia Tech’s Department of Mechanical Engineering, has been granted a National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) award to research and understand new strategies for manufacturing liquid metal-based soft composites.
These functional composites are deformable robust materials that could be used to make robots and electronics that are soft, stretchable, and compatible for skin-like wearable devices.
The CAREER award is the foundation’s most prestigious award for early career faculty, encouraging them to serve as academic role models in research and education and to lead advances in the mission of their organizations.
Bartlett’s team has an established record of innovative projects involving soft electronics and robotics, including a drone that morphs through meltable metal, a self-healing circuit, and an octopus-inspired adhesion glove. These innovations were produced as research-scale, single items in the lab, but they hold great potential for wider use.
Driving innovation in the field of soft robotics, the team is using its familiarity with the behavior of soft composite materials to create new approaches for large-scale manufacturing processes. To accomplish this, the researchers will continue studying methods of production in the lab and adapt those methods to be scalable.
“What’s exciting about manufacturing these materials is that you can completely change their properties through processing,” Bartlett says. “However, how to do this precisely is not well known. We aim to better understand how processing controls composite structure, so we can better enhance and tune properties.”
Both the morphing drone and the circuit projects used a liquid-metal composite layer and required a process of deforming and reforming the materials to create their functionality.
To determine how these composites might fit into a manufacturing method, the team will test new methods compatible with large-scale production, observing how liquid metal droplets evolve during processing. After those investigations yield their results, a new model for scaling up manufacturing will be developed.
“Liquid metals are unique in many ways, largely because they have the functionality of metals with soft mechanical properties like rubbers and liquids,” Bartlett says. “This is an exciting combination of properties and learning how to manufacture these systems can open new opportunities in soft material technologies.”
Once the team has created a scalable process to precisely control the mechanical, electrical, and thermal properties found in soft materials during processing, industries will be able to implement these methods and increase the availability of these new technologies.
As new soft robotics continue to be developed and commercialized, manufacturers will be able to deliver rapidly evolving technology into the hands of a larger group of users.
As the researchers take a close look at the functions and properties of their materials, they will also be creating soft functional composites with unique properties, engineered by their findings to control the shape and connection of metal droplets during processing.
For more information: Robotics and Automation
Constellium, based in Paris, announced that its collaborative research project, Aluminium Intensive Vehicle Enclosures (ALIVE), has achieved weight savings of 12 to 35 percent for electric vehicle (EV) battery enclosures. The project, led by Constellium’s University Technology Center at Brunel University London, focused on optimizing the design and manufacturing processes for structural aluminum enclosures in EVs.
Launched in 2020, the £15 million initiative was partially funded by the UK government through the Advanced Propulsion Centre (APC). The project involved six industrial partners, including BMW, Volvo, and Innoval Technology, along with university technology partners from Brunel University London and the University of Warwick.
The ALIVE team developed new aluminum designs using Constellium’s high-strength alloys, HSA6® and HCA6®, while implementing advanced joining and forming technologies. Full-scale prototypes were produced and successfully passed rigorous testing for performance, safety, and fire resistance. The project also generated cost models to support future industrialization of the designs.
Johnson Matthey, UK, a global leader in sustainable technologies, has been included on the CDP Supplier Engagement Leaderboard.
The leaderboard highlights companies proactively working with suppliers to ensure climate change action cascades down their supply chains, through supplier engagement, governance, Scope 3 emissions accounting and target-setting. Only the highest-rated companies around the world are celebrated.
JM’s chief sustainability officer, Anne Chassagnette, said: “We are committed to working closely with our suppliers to strengthen sustainability throughout our supply chains.
“Being recognized on this leaderboard highlights JM as a company that proactively drives environmental action at every opportunity. There’s still work to do across our value chain, but we are making great progress, with thanks to all our colleagues who are pushing our sustainability strategy forward.”
Constellium, Ravenswood, WV, announced that it has been selected by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations to begin award negotiations for up to $75 million in Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and Inflation Reduction Act funding as part of the Industrial Demonstrations Program (IDP). This investment will help fund the implementation of breakthrough low-to-no emissions technologies in Constellium’s Ravenswood facility, supporting the decarbonization of the casthouses, the plant’s most energy intensive operation.
This investment will support the installation of low-emissions SmartMelt furnaces that can operate using a range of fuels, including clean hydrogen, paving the way towards a zero carbon casthouse. In addition to reducing carbon emissions, the project is expected to help maximize recycled scrap intake, and to improve worker safety with the introduction of a hands-free casting process.
The project will also contribute to the local communities around Ravenswood with a dedicated budget to build a new training and wellness center for all employees and an onsite childcare, and to provide financial and technical resources for local schools and universities.
Constellium Ravenswood will now enter negotiations on the specific terms of the investment, including operational milestones, and timing of access to funds throughout the life of the project, estimated to be approximately five years. The final details of the project investment are subject to these negotiations.
https://www.constellium.com/news/constellium-ravenswood-selected-by-us-doe-to-receive-usd75million-investment
Johnson Matthey, London, has joined the UK’s Critical Mineral Association (CMA), a leading organisation that connects the critical minerals industry with the UK Government.
As the world’s largest recycler of platinum group metals (PGMs) and a leader in PGM catalytic applications, JM will bring its deep expertise to help inform critical minerals policy development and drive positive change across the critical mineral value chains.
PGMs are industrially extremely powerful and will play a key role in the net zero transition, with applications ranging from hydrogen fuel cells and electrolysers to production of sustainable aviation fuel. And with limited quantities of these critical minerals available, circularity is essential for securing the metal to meet existing and future demand.
JM will leverage its membership of the CMA to educate regulators and other industry leaders about the strategic importance of PGMs and help them navigate the existing PGM supply chain and future landscape. Following publication of the UK Government’s Critical Minerals Strategy, JM will help the government understand the strength of the UK’s position in PGM circularity and the wider network.
Nitrex Vacuum, Quebec, has installed a turnkey nitriding system at Akademi Metalurji, a full-service commercial heat-treating solutions provider located in Turkey. The project includes a mid-sized pit-type furnace, advanced controls, three process technologies along with accelerated cooling.
The decision to invest in a new nitriding system was driven by the company’s objective to overcome efficiency and quality challenges faced with their previous furnace at the Gebze facility. The prior system consumed excessive amounts of process gases and yielded inconsistent nitriding results. With the addition of a Nitrex NX-1015 pit furnace, Akademi Metalurji can now save on process gases and production time, while also expanding their heat treatment capabilities to accommodate wider-dimensioned parts. The nitriding furnace offers an effective work zone of 39” diameter by 59” high (1000 x 1500 mm) and can handle a load of up to 4400 lbs. (2000 kg). The supplied library of Nitreg-based recipes is tailored to meet different application requirements, resulting in a hardened surface that is highly wear-resistant. For applications like machinery components, tooling, dies, and molds, where Akademi Metalurji specializes, Nitreg delivers improved tooling performance, ensuring longer service life and higher throughput. Ultimately, this leads to tool cost savings for their customers.
The system was successfully installed at the Gebze facility, located southeast of Istanbul, and commenced operations in April 2023. Since then, it has been running smoothly, delivering excellent results.
Quintus Technologies, Vasteras, Sweden, announced that they will supply a high pressure fluid cell press to France’s LAUAK Group, a Tier 1 supplier to the aerospace industry. The press will be installed at the LAUAK Aerostructures factory in Grandola, Portugal, in September 2023.
Reaffirming its continued commitment to productivity enhancement, LAUAK selected the Quintus model QFC 0.7×1.8-800 press with high pressure technology to bolster its manufacturing efficiency. “The forming press is undoubtedly at the heart of sheet metal production,” says Mikel Charritton, LAUAK Group Managing Director. “Especially in the context of the current aerospace ramp-up, in particular the A320, A350, and B737 programs, LAUAK’s capital equipment investments are strongly influenced by the imperatives of competitiveness. This press significantly increases and secures our production capacity.” Quintus’s proprietary hydroforming process requires only one rigid tool half, an innovation that not only generates significant tool cost savings but also eliminates several forming operations, intermediate heat treatments, and operator dependencies.
Constellium, Paris, announced that they are participating in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Energy Star program as an Industrial Partner.
The Energy Star program is a voluntary initiative that helps businesses protect the environment by promoting energy-efficient products, homes, buildings and manufacturing plants, as well as save on energy costs. As an Industrial Partner, Constellium will work closely with the EPA to identify and implement energy-saving strategies and technologies across its manufacturing operations in the United States.
Constellium has already taken significant steps to reduce its energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. The company has set a target to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 30% by 2030 vs 2021, and reports its results annually in its sustainability report.
Researchers at the University of California San Diego have discovered a way to make ceramics tougher and more resistant to cracking, by building them with a blend of metal atoms with more electrons in their outer shell, unlocking the potential to enable ceramics to handle higher levels of force and stress than before.
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Cold-walled (double-walled water-cooled) systems were the first generation of plasma nitriding furnaces. This technology is also a vacuum-based process but employs the principle of glow discharge to provide energy for heating and nitriding at one time. Therefore, the independent control of the temperature stability and the nitriding intensity is not possible because both processes are using the same energy source—the plasma.
The hot-wall plasma nitriding furnaces, the next generation of cold-wall ion nitriding systems, are mainly used and built now. This system ensures optimal nitriding quality by fulfilling the highest demands on temperature and nitriding process control. The big advantage of this technology is the separation of the control of the heating and the plasma nitriding parameters.
For more information, click on the link below (subscription required). Then scroll to Figure 26
R Schneider; R. Mesquita; H. Altena; T. Müller; P. Seemann, Processes and Furnace Equipment for Heat Treating of Tool Steels, ASM International, 2014, https://doi.org/10.31399/asm.hb.v04d.a0005958
Seco/Warwick, Meadville, Pa., received another order for the supply of a Vector vacuum furnace to a South American international manufacturer of weapons and military equipment. The furnace will process various components including barrels, reels, locks, and firearm magazines, which are expected to be reliable, of the highest quality, and perform with outstanding resistance to negative external conditions.
This will be the second solution of this type in the South American defense industry leader’s internal hardening plant. It is a single-chamber gas-cooled vacuum furnace which can be used for a variety of metal heat treatment processes and applications. This solution has been adapted to the customer’s requirements so that it is as effective as possible at delivering the precision heat treatment results required for quality weaponry.
Thanks to the large working space (900x900x1200 mm), the Vector system is designed to process quite large elements. A characteristic feature of the design is convection heating, which improves heat transfer efficiency when heating at lower temperatures, and directional cooling, which enables differentiated cooling of problematic parts in terms of shapes.
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Constellium, Paris, announced today its agreement with Renault Group to establish a closed-loop recycling process for the all-new Megane E-TECH Electric.
Aluminum, lightweight and fully recyclable, is the material of choice for the electrification of the automotive fleet, and Constellium is well-positioned to support this transition with advanced products and solutions.
Renault Group has developed a closed-loop recycling process to bring manufacturing scrap from the stamping process directly back to Constellium, resulting in a reduced CO2 footprint. Based on best practices to avoid mixing 5xxx and 6xxx alloys and to compact scrap for optimal logistics at Renault Group, the closed-loop process will recycle these alloys, so that they can be reused in Renault Group’s production without any loss of properties, and overall with no downcycling.
Constellium, a full-service supplier of rolled and extruded aluminum solutions for the global automotive market, supplies aluminum for 1 in 4 vehicles produced in Europe and the U.S. We help automakers produce lighter, safer and more fuel-efficient vehicles, as well as electric vehicles with greater range. Renault Group is supplied by Constellium’s ASI-certified facility in Neuf Brisach, France.
Norman Noble, Highland Heights, Ohio, a medical device contract manufacturer, announced it has officially opened their new corporate headquarters at 5500 Avion Park Drive.
The new 51,000-square-foot facility on 12.35 acres accommodates the sales, estimating, and purchasing departments, and includes collaboration rooms, conference rooms, a learning center, and future manufacturing and product development space.
As project manager, Julie Bennett Lowry, Norman Noble’s director of facilities and environmental Health and Safety stated, “The newly constructed space is stunning, from the two-story main lobby with the full-height glass curtain walls to the 9-display video wall. The space was designed with multiple conference rooms ranging in size as well as a very open office concept making it inviting for personnel to collaborate.”
The technology and the design of the headquarters will help meet medical OEM customers’ growing requirements for Nitinol-based products, including structural heart implants, neurovascular devices, and vascular stent implants.
An interdisciplinary team of UMass Amherst researchers had their recently published article chosen as a “hot” article in the journal Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics. The team, led by chemistry professor Scott Auerbach and chemical engineering professor Wei Fan, reported breakthrough computer simulations confirmed by experiments showing faster crystallization of nanoporous catalysts known as zeolites.
Continue readingIron is an essential nutrient that almost all life requires to grow and thrive. Iron’s importance goes all the way back to the formation of the planet Earth, where the amount of iron in the Earth’s rocky mantle was ‘set’ by the conditions under which the planet formed and went on to have major ramifications for how life developed.
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It has been announced that the National Composites Centre (NCC, Bristol, U.K.) will play a key role in a bilateral international program between the U.K. and Australia to accelerate the integration of advanced materials into military platforms.
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Legend Mining Ltd. has received positive phase-one metallurgical test-work results on samples from a diamond drill hole at Mawson prospect within the Rockford Project, demonstrating recovery of up to 98% copper and 97% nickel.
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A bulk sample of hard rock being analyzed by British Lithium’s team at its Cornwall-based metallurgical laboratory is showing better than expected results. The company aims to extract lithium carbonate from the mica in granite, and analysis of the sample represents the latest stage in progressing towards full-scale production.
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Markforged, Watertown, Mass., creator of the world’s largest metal and carbon fiber industrial 3D printing platform, the Digital Forge, recently unveiled Onyx ESD – a new high-strength composite material for the electronics manufacturing industry.
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A rare mineral that has allowed Roman concrete marine barriers to survive for more than 2000 years has been found in the thick concrete walls of a decommissioned nuclear power plant in Japan.
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A team from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory (Upton, NY), Yale University (New Haven, CT), and University of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, PA), built a first-of-its-kind automated electrospray deposition tool for depositing films with finely controlled blend compositions made of up to three components onto single samples.
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Battelle has won a potential seven-year, $46.3 million contract to help the Department of Defense support the manufacture of thermal protection materials that can withstand extreme hypersonic environments. The Manufacturing of Carbon-Carbon Composites for Hypersonic Applications initiative seeks to rapidly mature and integrate manufacturing innovations that will accelerate the production of carbon-carbon composites.
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Materion Corporation announced that Shelly M. Chadwick will join the company as vice president, finance and chief financial officer, effective December 1, 2020.
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Artemis Testing Lab, Louisville, Colo., utilizes handheld XRF analyzers and thermoluminescence while working with galleries and dealers that need to perform materials analysis.
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Researchers from the Tokyo Institute of Technology presented a paper about cold-sprayed metal matrix composites that was named Best Paper of the ASM International ITSC 2019 conference in Japan.
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Sandvik Additive Manufacturing, Sweden, announces that it has developed a technology for producing a 3D-printed diamond composite part with a complex shape, extremely high hardness, and exceptional heat conductivity.
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