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NIST Office of Advanced Manufacturing (OAM)

Creating a Consortium for Advanced Hybrid Manufacturing-Integrating Technologies

Goal: Establish a national industry-based consortium to develop a technology roadmap for U.S. advanced hybrid metal additive manufacturing and secondary processing of combined additive and subtractive manufacturing parts.

Background: Advanced high performance and highly customized mechanical components are critical for the continued development of sophisticated products, such as metal prosthetics, aerospace structures, and low production-run parts. Additive manufacturing has been viewed as the solution to making these high-performance products affordable. Additive manufacturing describes processes where a product is made by fusing or depositing material, commonly layer-by-layer. The broad commercial use and growth of additive manufacturing have been limited by a number of factors, including surface qualities, costs, and broad supply chain capability. High-performance metal components cannot be achieved exclusively using additive manufacturing; secondary processing is often needed.

However, there is no widely used system in the U.S. for integrating additive manufacturing and secondary processing methods: a roadmap was needed to guide such integration.

Approach: Youngstown State University and North Carolina State University, in collaboration with manufacturing companies, academic partners, professional societies and research entities, established the Consortium for Advanced Hybrid Manufacturing—Integrating Technologies to: bring together stakeholders with the skills and needs to accelerate technical development in advanced metal additive and hybrid manufacturing; identify experts to pinpoint major technological challenges to addressing industry needs and accelerate the adoption of additive manufacturing to fill those needs; develop a technology roadmap to prioritize the challenges and define pathways and desired projects to collectively commercialize metal hybrid among small- and medium-sized manufacturers, and to establish required supply chains; and develop a workforce training framework. Six workshops with over 180 participants were held.

Outcome: The “Accelerating the Successful Integration of Metal Additive Manufacturing with Conventional Technologies and Value Chains Roadmap” aims to:

Create a U.S.-based consortium of entities including industries, academia, government agencies, professional organizations, and research entities who can both add to and benefit from advanced and hybrid manufacturing
Identify and prioritize current shortcomings under industry leadership and the technical challenges in achieving efficient hybrid processing
Develop a technology infrastructure that is a ready-to-implement post-processing system designed for finish machining of metallic additive manufacturing parts, without significant modifications to existing machine set-up
Identify and detail technological infrastructures required to address these challenges
Outline workforce development and education outreach programs for the implementation of the hybrid approach, which will greatly enhance the technical expertise of U.S. manufacturing companies

In 2017, the consortium initiated a hybrid manufacturing working group within America Makes, the Manufacturing USA® institute for additive manufacturing. The group is working on roadmap integration with America Makes, and on education and workforce development initiatives in hybrid manufacturing.

Lead: Youngstown State University

Funded Participants: North Carolina State University, College of Engineering; Pennsylvania State University, Dept. of Industrial and Systems Engineering; Iowa State University, Dept. of Industrial and Manufacturing Systems Engineering; Texas A&M University, Dept. of Industrial and Systems Engineering; Cornell University; Rochester Institute of Technology, College of Engineering; RP+M LLC (Rapid Prototyping + Manufacturing); Incodema3D
Award Number: 70NANB15H070
Federal Funding: $495,910
Project Duration: 30 months
AMTech Project Manager: Thomas R. Lettieri

More information: http://cam-it.us

Manufacturing

Created June 19, 2018, Updated February 23, 2019