Additive Manufacturing

MAY 2016

ADDITIVE MANUFACTURING is the magazine devoted to industrial applications of 3D printing and digital layering technology. We cover the promise and the challenges of this technology for making functional tooling and end-use production parts.

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INDUSTRY SPOTLIGHT mtadditive.com 19 The Promise of Multifunctional 3D Printing: An Interview with Denis Cormier By David Burns Past Chairman, AMT—The Association For Manufacturing Technology The additive manufacturing (AM) story is complex, as are the individual stories of the people who are the driving forces behind the evolution of AM. Denis Cormier is one such person. I had the chance to sit down with Denis, the Earl W. Brinkman Professor in the College of Engineering at Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT). He has spent 20 years as an academician in AM, starting the highly regarded Rapid Proto- typing Lab at North Carolina State University (NCSU) in 1996 and now leading 3D printing eforts at RIT. While at NCSU, Denis purchased the frst Arcam Electron Beam Melting (EBM) machine ever installed in North America. From 2003-2009, his metal additive manufacturing research focused on aerospace applications and materials. Much of his funded aerospace research involved developing EBM process parameters for aerospace materials of interest including titani- um alloys (Ti-6Al-4V, TiAl3), aluminum alloys (6061 Al, 7075 Al), copper alloys (CP copper, GR-Cop84), Inconel, and other alloys. During this time, Denis also did groundbreaking work in the feld of lattice structure design in 3D-printed parts. Since arriving at RIT, Denis has turned his attention to two emerging felds: printed electronics and the related feld of multifunctional printing. By replacing color pigments with electrically conductive nanoparticles (e.g. silver, copper, carbon nanotubes, graphene), the exact same printing processes used to produce documents can be adapted for the production of printed electronic devices. Expanding this concept, when one synthesizes inks from the appropriate nanoparticles, it is possi- ble to selectively print materials that serve specifc functions. Since Denis was an early academician to embrace the pos- sibility of 3D printing for industrial applications, I asked him how he found 3D printing. Denis replied, "Actually, it found me. In the early '90s, I read an article about this emerging feld called 'rapid proto- typing.' I'd done a lot of CNC machining, but this notion of building parts by printing one layer of material on top of the next was fantastic. It completely changed the direction of what I wanted to work on." I wondered what led him to leave NCSU and come to RIT. "I loved, and still love, my old home at NC State Univer- sity. But I had been there for 18 years and was getting the itch to pursue new challenges. My inner crystal ball had been Denis Cormier (left) is the Earl W. Brinkman Professor in the College of Engineering at Rochester Institute of Technology in New York. His current research focuses on 3D-printed electronics and multifunctional 3D printing. SOURCE: Rochester Institute of Technology Continued on page 24

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