Superalloy Additive Manufacturing

Additive manufacturing (link) is a modern manufacturing method used to produce polymer, metal or composite parts with complex geometries and low production costs. With increasing market space for advanced materials in additive manufacturing techniques, a series of barriers have developed to prove difficult to utilize new metals in SLS or  SLM processes. Our role in this solution has aimed to characterize and define failure modes and procedural issues that arise during the melt and stabilization phases of the additive manufacturing process. In cooperation with Castheon Inc., our superalloy project focuses on the mitigation of failure in nickel chromium superalloys utilized in high temperature, high stress environments commonly found in aerospace and spacecraft hardware.