Establishment of Metal/Ceramic Additive Manufacturing (3D Printing) Infrastructure towards Advanced Interdisciplinary Research, Education and Outreach.

The National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year (FY) 2016, under authority of 10 U.S.C. ¤ 2362 and the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering (OASD(R&E)), allocated $28 million to assist Historically Black Colleges and Universities and Minority-Serving Institutions (HBCU/MI) with equipment and instrumentation enhancements to improve their research and education capabilities in scientific disciplines important to the defense mission. The program aims enhance the capacity of HBCU/MI to participate broadly in defense research programs and activities and to increase the number of graduates, including underrepresented minorities, in fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). The PI and interdisciplinary researchers at North Carolina A&T State University (NCA&TSU) request support for the acquisition of a metal/ceramic 3D printing system (ProXª 200 Ð 3D Systems, Inc.). This equipment will significantly enhance and initiate cross-disciplinary research and education in the Advanced Manufacturing fields. In order to translate 3D printing discoveries from the laboratory to battlefield-ready products, a completely different set of fundamental research issues must be addressed - primarily those related to viable commercial scale-up of production volumes and integration of nanoscale structures into micro and mesoscale products. One of the barriers in realizing the revolutionary impact of additive manufacturing on society is the missing link of versatile freeform 3D fabrication processes that can enable such migration. Additive manufacturing (3D printing) is an innovative approach of building a 3D part layer-by-layer to obtain a freeform complex part shape. The versatility of the requested printer lies in the fact that it can create chemically pure, fully dense metal and ceramic parts. The equipment has accuracy compatible with EN ISO 2768 (fine) machining tolerances and a repeatability of about 20 microns. The ProXª 200 system can process more than 15 different materials from the metallic, inter-metallic, ceramic and custom designed alloys Ð a feat currently limited using other 3D printing methods. Current research activities have revealed a need to build complex 3D dimensional freeform entities using nano/micro elements from multiple materials in situ. However, this type of equipment is unavailable on our campus and in the region, which is a critical impediment in light of the high magnitude of research work at NCAT. The proposed equipment will leverage several research programs being sponsored by the DoD, NSF, ORNL and industry. It will complement and further extend existing capabilities in non-traditional manufacturing including microjet direct-write fabrication, pulse laser deposition, and magnetron sputtering. The requested instrument provides seamless metal/ceramic 3D printing for a variety of research applications pertaining to the DoD. These include the development of custom orthopedic implants, conformal lattice superstructures, in situ biochemical warfare sensors, aerospace alloys, novel magnetic intermetallic compositions, catalyst beds, high fracture toughness materials for emerging DoD applications. On the curriculum level, this equipment will be pivotal to introducing advanced manufacturing and materials processing courses at both undergraduate and graduate levels. This project will create immediate research experiences for African American undergraduates (REU) through the NC-LSAMP program advised by the faculty team. Exposure to additive manufacturing via the STEM Early College at NC A&T SU, K-12 Engineer Starters Program and dissemination through annual seminar series in partnership with regional professional engineering societies will extend a high impact outreach activity to the community. It will provide an infrastructure platform that enables students, local community and industry to leap forward into high-tech research, training and employment.