SBIR Phase I: Metal Nanocomposites designed for Low Power Sintering for use in Additive Manufacturing

这个小企业创新研究（SBIR）第一阶段项目的更广泛的影响/商业潜力是使广泛的行业能够快速和相对廉价地创建定制金属部件。以前用传统的数控加工不可能做到的事情，或者用传统的直接金属激光烧结增材制造成本过高的事情，现在可以用低成本的设备来完成。这将允许从医疗、航空航天到汽车等企业快速迭代其设计，并加快新开发的步伐。对我们社会的影响是难以预测的，就像互联网的影响也被严重低估了，因为它现在已经成为我们日常生活的一部分。创新本身就是大大降低制造定制金属部件的成本，从而使各种其他行业蓬勃发展。该项目旨在创造一种新型的金属复合材料，通过寻找新的方法将能量引导到金属颗粒融合在一起，从而与低成本的增材制造设备一起工作。创新之处在于材料的选择，使其易于加工。预期的技术成果是创建概念验证样品部件，并确定其机械强度，与其他更传统的制造方法相比。通常，有新产品或新业务想法的个人会被原型制作的高成本所阻碍，这种成本限制了它只适用于规模最大、最成熟的公司。该研究解决了目前使用增材制造制造定制金属零件成本极高的问题。

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project is to enable a broad range of industries to quickly and relatively inexpensively create custom metal components. What before would have been impossible to do with traditional CNC machining, or cost-prohibitive to do with traditional direct metal laser sintering additive manufacturing, can now be accomplished with low cost equipment. This will allow businesses ranging from medical, to aerospace, to automotive to rapidly iterate on their designs and increase the pace of new developments. The impact on our society is difficult to predict, just as the impact of the Internet was also grossly underestimated with the way that it has now become part of our everyday lives. The innovation itself is to greatly lower the cost of creating custom metal parts, thus enabling a wide variety of other industries to flourish.This project intends to create a new type of metal composite that works with low cost additive manufacturing equipment by finding new ways to direct energy into fusing the metal particles together. The innovation is in the choice of materials that enables the ease of processing. The anticipated technical results are the creation of proof of concept sample parts and a determination of their mechanical strength as compared to other more traditional methods of manufacturing. Often individuals with an idea for a new product or business are held back by the high cost of prototyping that limits it to only the largest, most established companies. The research addresses the current extremely high cost of using additive manufacturing to create custom metal parts.