Engineers from Polycontrols, Canada, and the National Research Council Canada, presented “Cold Spray Technology Into Industry: A New Hybrid Additive Manufacturing Centre to Address Production and Industrialization Challenges” at the ASM International ITSC 2019 conference in May.
Over the past two decades, cold spray has developed from a laboratory deposition technique to an established technology for numerous tailored applications in the military, aerospace, and energy sectors. However, its unique benefits as a coating and as an additive manufacturing process can potentially be leveraged to many more and diverse industries.
To realize such new opportunities, industries require better and broader access to the technology for application development, demonstration, and product validation. To bridge the gap from research centers to industrialization in a wider and more diversified market, a new Hybrid AM Facility has been created.
This state-of-the-art industrial facility integrates cold spray additive manufacturing (CSAM), in-situ machining, advanced robotics, and digital manufacturing concepts. At this facility, known as Poly/CSAM, companies can benefit from partnering with subject-matter experts in a confidential and customized production environment to address specific manufacturing and industrialization challenges, de-risk investment, and reduce time to market. Systematic data collection allows engineers to analyze performance and to evaluate costing and product quality in pre-production.
Current and projected activities include additive manufacturing of large-scale freeform stiffening structures; pre-production of high-volume and massive components, advanced CAD/CAM supported toolpath, build strategies and in-situ machining strategies for complex structures, near net-shape parts, and large components.
Mr. Luc Pouliot, Mr. Sylvain Desaulniers, Fernanda Caio, Polycontrols, Brossard, Quebec www.polycontrols.com
Jörg Oberste Berghaus, National Research Council Canada, Boucherville, Quebec
https://www.asminternational.org/web/itsc-2019/home
