Texas A&M University researchers have adjusted the process for creating defect-free metal additive manufactured parts. The researchers identified, through a combination of machine learning and single-track 3D printing experiments utilizing laser bed powder fusion process, promising alloy chemistries and process parameters required to print parts with uniform properties at the microscale.

The Metal Powder Industries Federation (MPIF) is pleased to announce that a National Science Foundation (NSF) grant will be provided to select students from U.S. colleges and universities to attend the PowderMet2022 and AMPM2022 conferences in Portland, Oregon, June 12-15. NSF Grant Awards will directly cover the full registration fee and hotel accommodation in double occupancy.

The 2021 Metal AM Outstanding Technical Paper Award has been selected, and this year's winning paper is "Electrostatic Charging and its Impact on Powder Flowability" by Louis-Philippe Lefebvre, Roger Pelletier and Cindy Charbonneau, National Research Council Canada. The paper was selected from among the highly qualified manuscripts that were presented at the AMPM2021 conference in Orlando and critically evaluated for the prestigious award.

The paper is available for download on the MPIF website. It is also included in Advances in Additive Manufacturing with Powder Metallurgy—2021. The authors will be officially recognized during AMPM2022 in Portland, Oregon, June 12–15, 2022.

While additive manufacturing (AM) techniques have revolutionized metal parts design complexity, the traditional laser beams could lead to defects and poor mechanical performance.

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) is exploring alternative shapes to the Gaussian beams commonly employed in high-power laser printing processes such as laser powder bed fusion (LBPF). In a paper published by Science Advances, researchers experimented with exotic optical beam shapes known as Bessel beams—reminiscent of bullseye patterns—which possess a number of unique properties such as self-healing and non-diffraction. They discovered that the application of these types of beams reduced the likelihood of pore formation and “keyholing,” a porosity-inducing phenomenon in LPBF exacerbated by the use of Gaussian beams.  

New car registrations by fuel type in August 2021, compared to August 2020 and 2019 (Courtesy JATO)

According to data from 26 European markets, electric vehicles (EVs) and plug-in hybrids outsold diesel vehicles by 10,100 units in August, representing 21% of all cars sold in the month. Even with an increase in sales of EV’s and hybrids, new car registrations overall reported a decline of 18% to 713,714 units, marking the lowest recorded volume in August since 2014.