Project webinar series: Paudel and To

Topic: "A Gradient-based Deformation Compensation Method for Minimizing Warpage in Sintered Binder Jetted Parts"

Speakers: Basil Paudel, graduate research assistant; Albert To, William Kepler Whiteford Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering & Materials Science, University of Pittsburgh with Wabtec, ExOne & ANSYS Inc.

Binder jet printing (BJP) enjoys high material deposition rate, low-cost feedstock, negligible residual stress, and self-supporting parts compared to other powder bed metal additive manufacturing (AM) processes. These unique advantages make BJP attractive to the manufacturing industry, especially for manufacturing large and complex parts with high resolution. However, one critical issue that hinders the broad adoption of BJP is the significant warpage introduced during post-sintering of jetted parts. A practical solution is to employ the so-called “deformation compensation” method, in which the original design geometry is modified so that the compensated model deforms to the target shape after fabrication (i.e. printing and sintering). However, existing deformation compensation methods have a loose parameter that needs to be tuned empirically to obtain satisfactory result for different geometries. To overcome this issue, the project team is developing a novel data driven deformation compensation method without any tuning parameter for designing sintered BJP parts. The developed method is expected to yield sintered binder jetted parts with reduced warpage and iterations than other existing methods. This would ultimately lead to significantly smaller upfront costs, waste, and lead-times for binder jetted parts.