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

这个小型企业创新研究（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，相对便宜地创建定制金属部件。以前用传统的CNC加工是不可能做到的，或者用传统的直接金属激光烧结增材制造是成本高昂的，现在可以用低成本的设备来完成。这将使从医疗到航空航天到汽车的企业能够快速扩展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，正如互联网的影响也被严重低估，因为它现在已经成为我们日常生活的一部分。创新本身是为了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，从而创造一种新型的金属复合材料，与低成本的增材制造设备一起工作。创新在于材料的选择，使加工变得容易。预期的技术成果是创建概念验证样品部件，并确定其与其他更传统的制造方法相比的机械强度。 通常，有新产品或新业务想法的个人会因为原型设计的高成本而受到阻碍，因为原型设计仅限于最大、最成熟的公司。 该研究解决了目前使用增材制造来制造定制金属零件的极高成本。

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.