Please welcome ISE’s own Dr. Chris Rock as he discusses the past, present, and future of CAMAL’s additive manufacturing research including material development and biomedical design and fabrication.
As always refreshments are available in 428 Daniels Hall 30 minutes before the seminar begins.
North Carolina State University has been at the forefront of AM research for 15 years with a wide range of research topics from material development to biomedical design and fabrication for custom implants. Recent research at the Center for Additive Manufacturing and Logistics (CAMAL) has focused not only on developing materials unavailable to AM (OFC Cu, WC-Co, Amorphous alloys, i.e.) but also feedstock research into powder bed performance, non-standard particle size distributions, recyclability, beam to powder bed interaction (spatter) and mechanical testing. New areas of research interests at CAMAL include FEM modeling, powder production and AM-specific alloy development to accelerate the use of next generation materials for part production.
Materials commercially available today for AM are very limited in number and were originally designed for legacy processes unrelated to additive manufacturing. The most popular alloys used today in AM such as Ti-6Al-4V or Inconel 718 were designed in the 1950’s and often rely on cast-wrought plus heat treatment processes to achieve properties. Additive Manufacturing requires alloys designed for AM-specific needs to optimize its capabilities and should include material considerations such as absorptivity, electrical & thermal conductivity, thermal stress, phase precipitation and anisotropy.
The CAMAL is evolving to meet the needs of academia and industry by developing requirements for a pilot scale metal powder gas atomizer capable of producing alloys in demand today and AM-designed alloys for tomorrow. Modeling tools such as Thermocalc will be deployed for alloy design accompanied by solidification and other related models to optimize new compositions and accelerate research for part production. This seminar demonstrates selected research at the CAMAL and the plans for future research to meet the educational needs of the next generation of engineers required for advanced manufacturing.
Dr. Chris Rock graduated with a Ph.D in Materials Science from the University of Kentucky in 1997. He spent 9 years at INCO/ Special Metals as a melting and forging process engineer and R&D process engineer. These experiences cultivated an expertise in melting and thermomechanical processing of Nickel based alloys (Inconel 718, 625 i.e.) and superaustinitic stainless steels. While at Special Metals he also became the company’s FEM modeling resource for heat transfer, thermomechanical processing and casting utilizing software tools such as Comsol, DEFORM and FLOW3D. Dr. Rock also spent 10 years at ATI in research and development of Nickel base and Titanium alloy systems. He managed projects ranging from alloy and process development, process monitoring & data warehousing and R&D capabilities expansion. In 2013 Dr. Rock became the powder feedstock and AM expert at ATI leading high value customer driven R&D projects and in 2015 developed the corporate strategy for AM. In 2016 Dr. Rock joined the CAMAL as research staff focusing mainly on material development and powder feedstock related research.
