Steven Attanasio [00:18]
It’s really, I think, the next generation of manufacturing metal parts. You take a digital 3D model and you use it to drive a laser beam or an electron beam in a pattern. You put metal powder or metal wire underneath it, it melts and it very quickly solidifies and it forms a part just in the shape that you want, so that digital model becomes the part.
That’s really exciting.
James Eliou [00:43]
Rather than focusing on the feasibility of manufacturing an engineer can focus their design efforts towards increasing the efficiency of their parts such that their parts will have increased capabilities in the end product
Tressa White [00:57]
As a materials engineer, I get to look at the same old alloys in a totally new and different way
Andy Turnbull [1:03]
Now this isn’t replacing traditional machining, but it’s more of a supplement. It’s really interesting whenever we are able to take a look at a part on the computer, we’re able to look at ways that we can reduce weight or take away mass
Tressa White [1:15]
Additive manufacturing is really a more precise, you can have strength in different directions, you can have compliance in other directions
James Eliou [1:24]
There’s a lot of different capabilities that additive manufacturing can achieve that are outside the realm of traditional manufacturing
Steven Attanasio [1:32]
A part that we are right now, we might have 10 different individual parts that we have to weld together or use bolts, additive manufacturing allows you to maybe to make it as one part. One printed part with one model.
Andy Turnbull [1:45]
Thinking that you no longer have to maintain a warehouse full of parts, but the possibility that you may just have to maintain a database of files and then be able to print them off at will, I think the full potential has yet to be realized…
Tressa White [2:03]
You can get rid of bolts in inconvenient places
Steven Attanasio [2:04]
Anything that goes on the ship, failure is not an option. So that’s a big part of what we do, so if the ship needs a part quickly, we can get it to them, get them back on station defending the nation doing the work that they’re supposed to be doing.
