A Walk Through the UCRI Advanced Manufacturing Center
The Advanced Manufacturing Center at the University of Cincinnati Research Institute is a resource for university students and faculty, as well as manufacturers.
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The University of Cincinnati Research Institute (URCI) serves as a mechanism for partnership between university researchers and private companies. Under the UCRI’s umbrella, the Advanced Manufacturing Center conducts research and provides consulting services related to additive manufacturing.
Dustin Lindley, manager of the Advanced Manufacturing Center, presented a tour of the Advanced Manufacturing Facility on November 17 to a group of manufacturers, professors and students.
Fiber-reinforced material is one area of interest at the center. This sample was built on a Mark One 3D printer, which has two print heads, one for extruding the plastic filament and another for laying strands of carbon fiber, Kevlar, fiberglass or nylon. The layers of fiberglass visible around the outer edge make the part much stronger than it would be otherwise.
An Objet Connex 3D printer from Stratasys enables combining two materials into a single part. This heart model features a rigid material (the white portions) intertwined with a softer, rubber-like polymer.
There’s a piece of AM history in the center’s metals lab: This machine was the first EOSint M250 Xtended system in North America when it was purchased by Morris Technologies in 2003. GE Aviation inherited the machine when it acquired Morris in 2013, and later donated it to the UCRI. It is now used for building larger metal AM parts.
The lab’s Concept Laser Mlab cusing machine has a compact build platform which means that it can be stocked with smaller quantities of metal powder—say 10 pounds at a time—making it ideal for testing different materials. Here, Lindley discusses a recent experiment with a nickel alloy, which had difficulty sticking to the stainless steel build plate.
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There is much we don’t know about additive manufacturing. Unlike traditional machining, there are few references or existing answers for many of the challenges it presents.
As a result, “No one trusts it yet,” says Dustin Lindley. “But, that’s a good thing.” Lindley is the manager of the Advanced Manufacturing Center at the University of Cincinnati Research Institute (UCRI). He sees the distrust of additive as a positive, because it means that the processes, machines and materials are undergoing levels of scrutiny that previous manufacturing technologies have not. While a complete knowledge base may not yet exist, research institutes such as the Advanced Manufacturing Center are actively building one.
Founded in 2014, the Advanced Manufacturing Center serves both private companies seeking consulting or other help with additive, and university faculty and students exploring research interests or commercialization of innovations. It is under the umbrella of the UCRI, which functions as a central point of contact between industry and UC through its various centers. (Others include UC Engineers and the Center for Collaborative Medical Device Design.)
Currently the center occupies two labs (one for metals and one for plastics) within a building on the University of Cincinnati's Victory Parkway Campus, and is staffed by Lindley and a graduate engineering student. Future plans include hiring an additional full-time researcher, and expanding to a second location sometime in the next few years.
Click through the slideshow above for a quick look at the capabilities of this facility.
