So, it should come as no surprise that the newest generation of machines from Virginia-based MELD Manufacturing are aimed squarely at aerospace applications, with modifications to give them the capability to deposit titanium and aluminum alloys using MELD’s proprietary metal AM process.

The company’s unique solid-state process eschews the melting seen in powder bed fusion (PBF) and directed energy deposition (DED), and instead uses a combination of friction and pressure to deform metal feedstocks plastically. As a result, MELD machines can operate in open atmospheres and, according to the company, the parts they print are fully dense.

While MELD has previously claimed that its process is compatible with aluminum and titanium (as well as magnesium, copper, nickel, and steel), the new DragonForge series is being positioned as being even more capable than previous generations, printing AA7075 (for example) without graphite or other lubricants.

“This equipment is truly next generation capability for rapid 3D printing of large aerospace parts,” said MELD Manufacturing CEO Nanci Hardwick in a press release.

According to the company, the machines’ new hardware configuration is paired with software features intended to enhance machine autonomy and the user interface, as well as new simulation and monitoring tools. MELD is also highlighting the addition of a digital twin to help plan and implement a printing strategy before actually starting production.

From a business perspective, the strategy here seems to be positioning the DragonForge series as enabling the on-demand production of “printed forgings” to support the repair or replacement of legacy components, as well as new parts, without the need to rely on the (currently anemic) domestic forging industry.

Between the push to reshore industrial production for the sake of national defense and the difficulties of rebuilding an industry that has largely relocated to India and China, this strategy seems like a safe bet indeed.

The post MELD Manufacturing targets aerospace with new line of machines appeared first on Engineering.com.

(If you didn’t catch it, don’t worry! It’s still available on-demand.)

But you don’t have to take her word for it (or mine, for that matter); all you need to do is peruse a selection of the most recent announcements from some of the biggest players across the industry.

Nikon Advanced Manufacturing & the U.S. Navy Maritime Industrial Base

Earlier this week, Nikon Advanced Manufacturing announced a team-up with the U.S. Navy’s Maritime Industrial Base (MIB) Program, focusing on advancing additive manufacturing for naval applications. The upshot of this partnership is that the MIB Program is funding an NXG 600E laser powder bed fusion (L-PBF) system at the Nikon AM Technology Center in Long Beach, CA.

While the system will be operated by Nikon AM Synergy, the company’s engineering services subsidiary, it will be dedicated to developing technical data packages and producing critical components to support U.S. Navy shipbuilding and repair operations.

This news follows another announcement earlier this year that Nikon SLM Solutions would be collaborating with Allegheny Technologies Incorporated and Bechtel Plant Machinery on hypersonic and naval propulsion development.

UltiMaker introduces Secure Line

The growth of AM in defense is not limited to large-format metal systems. Even desktop material extrusion (MEX) is getting in on the action with the latest announcement from UltiMaker: the launch of a new Secure Line of desktop 3D printers specifically designed for defense and high-security applications.

Built to support land, sea, and air operations, the UltiMaker S6 Secure and UltiMaker S8 Secure included hardened security features, including factory-flashed, tamper-resistant firmware, encrypted and auditable file handing, and hardware-sealed components. In a rare move for modern desktop 3D printers, these machines are also built without cloud dependencies to eliminate any external attack surfaces. That means no Wi-Fi, no external cameras, and no third-party devices.

“With Secure Line, we give defense organizations something they have not had before: industrial 3D printers they can fully trust anywhere in the world,” said Arjen Dirks, UltiMaker’s CTO, in a press release. “We designed our Secure Line products with security built into every layer and to meet internationally recognized standards, combining reproducibility and long-term reliability in a form that guarantees tactical capability in defense environments.”

Velo3D & Linde supply domestic CuNi powder parts

On the materials side, bell-ringer and recently uplisted Velo3D recently signed an agreement with Linde AMT (formerly known as Praxair Surface Technologies) to supply domestically produced 70-30 Copper-Nickel (CuNi) powder in support of the U.S. Navy and MIB Program.

According the Velo3D, this will result in a fully domestic AM supply chain for producing corrosion-resistant CuNi components for naval systems. Potential naval applications for CuNi components produced on the Velo3D Sapphire XC large-format printer include shipboard piping, cooling systems, and structural components requiring resistance to seawater corrosion and biofouling.

This follows another recent defense-related announcement from Velo3D in the form of an agreement with the Class 3 weapons manufacturer, Ohio Ordinance Works. More recently, Velo3D also received a U.S. Navy contract to develop, qualify, and print CuNi components from the U.S. Navy using a dedicated Sapphire XC machine with Linde AMT’s CuNi powder. In a press release, the company claims this agreement will “support year-round production at no cost to participating Navy and MIB stakeholders.”

Expect more of these kinds announcements as the defense sector continues to allocate funds from its seemingly bottomless coffers to any and all willing and able companies in the AM industry.

The post Additive defense update: Nikon, UltiMaker, and Velo3D appeared first on Engineering.com.

“These honors recognize technological advances across computing, physical sciences, energy and biology — and highlight how ORNL is strengthening the nation’s scientific leadership, security and economy through innovation,” said ORNL director Stephen Streiffer, in a press release.

You can see the full list of awards on R&D World, but there are three in particular that are worth calling out in the context of 3D printing.

1) BIPHASICS: Point-source CO2 capture with biphasic solvents

Published in Chemical Engineering Journal, this research introduced a novel approach to capturing carbon dioxide using the biphasic solvent, diethylenetriamine (DETA), enabled via 3D printing. According to the ORNL researchers, the DETA formulation significantly improves CO2 capture efficiency compared to the conventional monoethanolamine solution by reducing the energy intensity of solvent regeneration.

More specifically, the DETA solvent’s energy consumption is up to 46 percent less per mole of CO2 recovered while also needing to regenerate only 50 percent of the solvent volume, making the carbon capture process more energy efficient and cost-effective. In this application, 3D printing enabled the researchers to create a packed bed design with integrated heat-exchange capabilities, minimizing heat loss and thereby reducing the cost of CO2 capture from point sources by 30 percent versus conventional methods.

Moreover, the 3D printing process used in BIPHASICS technology is suggestive of other industrial applications, such as distillation columns in chemical processing as well as heat and mass transfer systems in petroleum refining.

2) SAM+J: Solid-state additively manufactured transition joints for extreme environment

Recently approved for a US patent, the solid-state additively manufactured transition joint (SAM+J) enables seamless bonding of dissimilar metals using a combination of 3D printing and solid-state processes. According to its creators, SAM+J was designed for use in extreme environments and eliminates weak weld interfaces, enabling joints with six times the durability of traditional alternatives.

The technology was developed at ORNL in partnership with West Virginia University, GE Vernova, Carpenter Additive, and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Utilizing ORNL’s Integrated Computational Weld Engineering software, the research team was able to model and validate their design to ensure the joints met or exceeded industry requirements. The result is a practical solution for developing high-performance, multi-material joints for aerospace and power generation applications.

3) DR-Weld: A high-performance digital reality simulation tool of large-scale welding and additive manufacturing

The last award we’ll cover is for a tool to improve 3D printing rather than for an application of 3D printing technology itself, but it’s impressive nonetheless. Digital Reality Welding Simulation (DR-Weld) is designed to enabled industry-scale modeling of welding and metal additive manufacturing (AM) processes faster and with greater precision than other techniques. As anyone who’s dabbled with simulating these processes knows, there are heavy computational requirements to predicting the interactions between the thermal, mechanical, metallurgical and fluid-dynamic phenomena involved.

DR-Weld was designed to reduce the computational load of such tasks via a patented adaptive acceleration scheme, enabling it to function efficiently on GPU workstations as well as supercomputers. By reducing prototyping costs and shortening development cycles (potentially by weeks or even months), the technology’s creators aim to make advanced simulation more accessible, particularly for small and midsize manufacturers.

For more information on this year’s R&D 100 Awards, visit the R&D World website.

The post Oak Ridge National Laboratory awarded for 3D printing research appeared first on Engineering.com.

Of course, that’s not how things have played out. Local Motors, which was central to the 3D printed car at IMTS, shut down in 2022. Today, the idea that our roads will soon be filled with 3D printed vehicles – even vehicles containing a substantial portion of 3D printed components – seems less likely than ever. Nevertheless, additive manufacturing (AM) still has an important part to play in the auto industry; it’s just not the one many of us expected.

Additive manufacturing uptake in the auto industry

Fadi Abro, senior director for transportation and mobility at Stratasys, distinctly remembers his first encounter with 3D printing. “I started at a company called Solid Concepts, which was acquired by Stratasys back in 2010,” he tells me. “It was literally my first day, and somebody handed me an SLA part. While they were explaining how it was 3D printed, I flexed the part ever so slightly, and it shattered. Things have changed dramatically in terms of material properties since then, but it was a quick lesson.”

No doubt there are many engineers who can recall similar early encounters with additive parts, though probably not quite so dramatic. And while additive materials have certainly advanced since those early days, those initial encounters likely shaped the perceptions of many engineers regarding the capabilities of 3D printed parts. As a result, the technology spent years largely confined to the realm of prototyping, where its lead times and capacity for iteration outweighed any issues with mechanical durability.

Of course, AM eventually found its way into other applications, specifically those involving high-value, low-volume components, chiefly in the aerospace and medical device industries. In contrast, the high volumes of the auto industry kept 3D printed parts from seeing end-use applications outside of the occasional luxury case.

As Abro sees it, part of what explains the slower adoption of AM in the auto industry versus aerospace or medical devices is that 3D printing as a technology is a double-edged sword. “The beautiful thing about additive is that it can do everything,” he explains, “The negative is that it can do everything, so people lose focus when they don’t get into it with a use case in mind.” That’s one reason that the AM industry as a whole has been shifting to emphasize specific applications of the technology over its general capabilities. In the case of the auto industry, many of the most promising applications involve jigs, fixtures, and tooling.

Automotive applications for 3D printing

“We use those terms,” Abro says, “but really it’s production support rather than production components. You can make production components on a Stratasys 3D printer but the volumes have to be low and the value of the part has to be high for it to make sense.”

However, when it comes to production support (i.e., jigs, fixtures, and tooling), the calculation of the potential value of 3D printing is different. Because the auto industry works in such high volumes, shaving seconds off of assembly times can result in six or even seven figure returns on investment. That’s why, according to Abro, “You’d be hard pressed to walk into a major OEM plant and not find a bunch of Stratasys-printed tools helping to put the cars together. Basically, the money’s in the tooling.”

What makes 3D printing such a good fit for tooling? It’s a combination of the usual advantages associated with the technology: flexibility, on-demand production, and rapid iteration. Automakers can potentially save hundreds of thousands – if not millions – of dollars in tooling costs by adopting additive manufacturing because these advantages enable them to manufacture the production supports they need and adjust them as needed without having to wait for the tooling necessary to produce them. Given that, it’s natural to wonder why, at least according to Abro, the proportion of additive tooling is still in the single-digit percentages.

“It really boils down to two things,” he tells me, “It’s awareness and confidence. Let’s say you have a Tier 2 job shop that makes a couple of different components for a Tier 1. They don’t really have the awareness that 3D printing can be industrial. They still think of it as a hobbyist’s toy. Then there’s confidence: recognizing that 3D printing can do the things that we’re saying it can do.” As an example, he cites Toyota using AM to produce plastic end-of-arm tools that would typically be fabricated in metal.

Looking a bit more closely at the automotive supply chain, the AM adoption rate is pretty much what you’d expect, with OEMs accounting for the majority, Tier 1s making up significantly less, and little to no adoption in the Tier 2s and beyond. If AM were being used for more end-use parts, that might not be the case, since the OEMs could push their suppliers more directly to adopt the technology. In the case of tooling, however, OEMs have less ability to dictate the manufacturing process, so adoption is naturally less widespread.

“It’s hard to say to a Tier 1 supplier, ‘Buy this half-million-dollar printer and you’ll recognize the revenue from it in your tooling,’” Abro explains. “They’re going to want to know that it works, and that’s what the Stratasys Tooling Center of Excellence is intended to support. If you’re a Tier 1 supplier and you have a couple of projects you want to try out, you don’t have to buy a printer. Instead, you can go to the tooling experts at the CoE to help you design and print it.”

The future of AM in automotive

Despite its 40-year history, there’s still a generational gap when it comes to how engineers see 3D printing as a technology. On the one hand, there’s the old guard who think of hobbyist machines churning out cheap plastic toys, and on the other there’s the younger engineers who grew up with 3D printing and see it as a tool that lets them tinker with designs.

As Abro notes, however, there are also the executives in between who don’t want their engineers wasting time putting glue on build plates or downloading free software to make a desktop machine work. “They want an industrial solution that just prints parts on demand,” he says, “They don’t want to see their engineers spending hours trying to make a $20 print work.”

Fortunately, we’ve come a long way from a young engineer accidentally shattering a 3D printed part on their first day. “Material development and the accuracy of the systems has been on a linear upward trajectory,” Abro claims, “especially when you look at the industrial systems.” The natural question to ask then is: What’s next?

“Our focus is going to be on size and throughput,” Abro says. “Making bigger parts faster opens up the aperture of applications, especially within the tooling space. And the specific use case in automotive will continue to be tooling, because every two to three years you have to have a brand new version of a car and that means you have to retool your plant. That’s a never ending need in the automotive industry. I’m seeing the suppliers starting to wake up and ask, ‘What’s GM doing?’ and ‘Why aren’t we doing that?’”

So, while we may never see showrooms filled with 3D printed cars, that doesn’t mean additive manufacturing won’t have a growing part to play in the future of the automotive industry.

The post Dude, where’s my 3D printed car? appeared first on Engineering.com.

According to the company, the new approach to manufacturing solar array substrates reduces composite build times by up to six months, amounting to a 50 percent improvement compared to conventional techniques. As part of its announcement of the new technology, Boeing has stated that flight-representative hardware utilizing this technology has already completed engineering testing and is currently progressing through the company’s standard qualification process.

The first 3D-printed solar arrays will fly Spectrolab solar cells aboard small satellites built by Millennium Space Systems. Both of these non-integrated subsidiaries are part of Boeing’s Space Mission Systems organization.

“By integrating Boeing’s additive manufacturing expertise with Spectrolab’s high‑efficiency solar tech and Millennium’s high‑rate production line, our Space Mission Systems team is turning production speed into a capability, helping customers field resilient constellations faster,” said Michelle Parker, vice president of Boeing Space Mission Systems, in a press release.

Boeing also claims that this approach enables a parallel build of the complete array, pairing a printed, rigid substrate with modular solar technologies. The company avers that 3D printing features such as harness paths and attachment points directly into each panel replaces dozens of separate parts, long‑lead tooling, and delicate bonding steps. The result is one strong, precise piece that is faster to build and easier to integrate.

“By pairing qualified materials with a common digital thread and high‑rate production, we can lighten structures, craft novel designs, and repeat success across programs,” said Melissa Orme, vice president of materials and structures for Boeing Technology Innovation. “That’s the point of enterprise additive, it delivers better parts today and the capacity to build many more of them tomorrow.”

In total, Boeing claims to have integrated more than 150,000 additive parts into its products, including more than 1,000 radio frequency parts on each Wideband Global SATCOM satellite. The new array approach is also intended to scale to larger platforms, including the Boeing 702-class spacecraft slated for release next year

The post Boeing’s additive solar array substrate cuts production time in half appeared first on Engineering.com.

Fortunately, a team of engineers and materials scientists at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) and the Hasso Plattner Institute in Germany have come up with a way to have their sustainable AM cake and eat it too, in a manner of speaking. Together, they created SustainaPrint, a system for integrating eco-friendly filaments into material extrusion (MEX) while preserving a 3D printed part’s structural integrity.

The basic idea is simple: rather than print an entire object in less sustainable high-performance plastic, the system analyzes its model using finite element analysis simulation to predict where it’s most likely to experience stress. Those zones can be reinforced with stronger material while the rest of the part can be printed using weaker (but also greener) filament.

“Our hope is that SustainaPrint can be used in industrial and distributed manufacturing settings one day, where local material stocks may vary in quality and composition,” said MIT PhD student and CSAIL researcher Maxine Perroni-Scharf, in a press release. She’s a lead author on a paper presenting the project. “In these contexts, the testing toolkit could help ensure the reliability of available filaments, while the software’s reinforcement strategy could reduce overall material consumption without sacrificing function,” she added.

For their experiments, the team used Polymaker PolyTerra PLA as the eco-friendly filament, and Ultimaker Tough PLA for reinforcement. Using a 20 percent reinforcement ratio, their system was able to produce objects with 70 percent of the strength of counterparts produced entirely using Tough PLA. Additionally, in one test, the team reports that their hybrid version outperformed the version printed entirely in Tough PLA, suggesting that this may be due to the reinforced version’s ability to distribute stress more evenly and thereby avoid brittle failure due to excessive stiffness.

Although the current system is designed for dual-extrusion printers, the researchers believe that with some manual filament swapping and calibration, it could be adapted for single-extruder setups, too. The researchers plan to release SustainaPrint open-source for both practical and educational purposes.

The research paper is available via GitHub.

The post MIT engineers enhance additive manufacturing sustainability appeared first on Engineering.com.

A group of six Bachelor’s students at ETH Zurich have developed a variation on the laser powder bed fusion (L-PBF) process that takes specific aim at improving the production of cylindrical parts, including rocket nozzles and turbomachinery components. Their design came about as part of a project to develop bi-liquid-fuelled rocket nozzles for ARIS, the Swiss Academic Space Initiative.

In just nine months, the student team designed, built, and tested a new L-PBF machine that incorporates a rotating platform, a departure from the standard rectilinear design used by commercial L-PBF machines. The advantage of this design is that the machine can operate continuously, rather than pausing to recoat the powder bed after each layer is melted.

“This process is ideally suited to rocket nozzles, rotating engines and many other components in the aerospace industry,” said Michael Tucker, a senior scientist at ETH Zurich who lead the project, in a press release. “They typically have a large diameter but very thin walls.” While the machine can still produce non-axisymmetric parts, as well as arrays of parts, it’s particularly effective for cylindrical geometries.

Moreover, the researchers also claim that their rotating machine can process two different metals in a single operation using significantly less metal powder compared to conventional multi-material setups. The rotating architecture also reportedly improves inert gas flow. “At first we underestimated the extent to which the gas flow mechanism affects product quality,” said Tucker. “Now we know it’s crucial.”

Tucker and his team faced several challenges during the project, including synchronizing the scanning laser with the rotation of the gas inlet and powder supply. They also had to design and build several of the machine’s components themselves, including a rotatable connection for the gas inlet and a system for automatically refilling the powder during operation. ETH has already filed a patent for the rotary multi-material L-PBF technology.

Despite its potential, the machine still has some crucial limitations, particularly in the build volume: thus far, components manufactured with the prototype machine have been limited to a maximum of 20 centimeters in diameter. As such, the students are currently working on scaling the process in terms of both speed and size, with the hope of finding industry partners to help them further develop the machine.

Their research is published in CIRP Annals.

The post A new spin on 3D printing metals appeared first on Engineering.com.

Morgan Maia, senior manager for technical partnerships at Oracle Red Bull Racing, Alba Colón, director of technical partnerships at Hendrick Motorsports, and John Church, president of JDC-Miller MotorSports sat down with moderator (and former professional racing driver and host of the YouTube motorsport engineering channel Driver61) Scott Mansell to share their unique perspectives on three different forms of motorsport: Formula One, NASCAR, and IMSA.

What follows is an edited and abridged version of their conversation.

Scott Mansell: You each represent very different forms of motorsport with very different challenges. Can you take a minute to explain your discipline?

Morgan Maia: Sure. In Formula One, the challenge is massive. We have 24 races a year, traveling around the world—from China and Japan to the U.S. and Europe. It’s difficult to always have the car in one piece because we have to trust that everything works straight off the truck without all the tools at hand.

Another challenge is the cost cap. We cannot spend more than $150 million per year. While that sounds like a lot, it goes quickly once you account for employees, parts, travel, and logistics. The challenge is to compete within those limits while ensuring both drivers perform at their best across 24 races.

Alba Colón: Can I have your budget? (laughs) NASCAR is a bit different. Imagine 40 cars running 38 weekends a year. Just last week, for the first time, we raced outside the U.S. in Mexico. We don’t only race on ovals, like in Las Vegas, we also compete on road courses and even dirt tracks. So our cars must be ready for any kind of surface on any kind of track, 38 weekends a year.

We’re holding at around 180 mph normally, with finishes sometimes separated by just 0.01 seconds between first and second place. Pit stops are under 9 seconds. So you can imagine how important precision is.

John Church: IMSA is endurance racing. We run a Porsche 963 hybrid in the Hypercar (GTP) class. Everything in endurance racing is about precision and consistency. We sometimes go through multiple body parts during a race weekend, so everything has to be built to exact specifications to ensure consistency across changes.

We start our season with a 24-hour race, then we do some shorter races that are only 100 minutes long, and we also do medium races that are two hours and forty minutes as well as some six-hour races. So whenever we’re changing parts out, it’s important that the whole car stays consistent from one race to the next throughout the weekend.

Scott Mansell: Let’s get into the technical meat of how your teams run at the top of their motorsport. Being successful in motorsports is all about measurement because you can’t improve if you can’t measure anything. So, how are you using Hexagon tools to improve your performance, both in the workshop and on the racetrack?

Morgan Maia: We use Hexagon in two main ways. First, at the factory. We’re always working with prototypes and don’t have time to test the car before heading to a race. A part might be manufactured on Thursday evening, shipped overnight, and fitted Friday morning for FP1. That means we must be absolutely sure that part is perfect, because we can’t send it back. It has to work immediately with the other 8,000 components on the car.

The second use is for regulations. We send a 3D CAD model of our car, then scan the real car at the track to overlay the two and ensure compliance. If the car isn’t in regulation, we can’t race.

Scott Mansell: So when you bolt the gearbox on, for example, you’re checking everything is perfectly aligned with the engine and chassis. What kind of tolerances are you working with?

Morgan Maia: We’re working with microns. The car is like a watch: everything must be extremely accurate. Even temperature matters. For example, if you start the engine cold, tolerances can be off enough to cause catastrophic failure. So everything must be warmed properly. Micron-level precision is how we find the extra tenths we need to win.

And the drivers feel everything. They can detect a millimeter or even a micron difference. Their feedback can sometimes be sharper than the data itself. Precision gives them confidence to push the car to its limits.

Scott Mansell: Alba, how are you using Hexagon products in NASCAR?

Alba Colón: Well, you’ll find Hexagon tools everywhere in our shop. NASCAR regulations changed a few years ago with the Gen-7 car. Before, we designed and built about 80% of the car ourselves. Now, to control costs, we buy around 80% and only design 20%.

That means we measure absolutely everything we receive: the chassis, the body, all the parts of the vehicle. Everything must be precise. Our Hexagon equipment ensures those parts meet tolerance before going out, since we’re not allowed to bring any of that equipment to the track, so we have to make sure everything we’re taking there is precisely measured.

Scott Mansell: And you’re not just measuring the bodywork, for example, to make sure it’s in tolerance. I’m sure there’s some engineering going on there to try and gain performance by mixing and matching different parts. What’s that like?

Alba Colón: Absolutely, yes. We do a lot of mixing and matching because, for example, this chassis makes more sense to use with that suspension. It’s like a chess game every week, putting together the perfect car.

Scott Mansell: John, what about IMSA?

John Church: In IMSA, when we unload at the track, we go straight to technical inspection. The whole car is scanned, top and bottom, and we’re allowed only a 3mm deviation from the datum.

So before leaving the shop, we scan the entire car and overlay it with the datum to make sure we’re within spec. If something’s off, we fix it before we even load the truck. That saves time and it means less drama with the officials. In endurance racing, everything’s precise until you start hitting things, and then when you need to replace the nose, you want to know each one is exactly the same. Consistency is what matters: your average pace is more important than your fastest lap.

Scott Mansell: Three millimeters sounds like a lot of tolerance when we’re talking about microns, but I’m sure your engineers are thinking, “Let’s go to 2.99999,” so they can get as close to the edge as possible.

John Church: Of course, you’re always trying to push the envelope where you can, but it’s more about making sure everything’s legal and, beyond that, making sure every replacement part that’s going on your car is the same as the last one so the drivers and the engineers have the confidence that it’s the same car as the previous session. If you can’t do that, that’s when the wheels start to fall off the bus.

Scott Mansell: Morgan, you mentioned the incredibly fast development cycles in Formula One. How quickly can you turn around a design to manufacturing and then get it on the actual car?

Morgan Maia: So, again, we always need to have the cost cap in mind, but we also do around a thousand upgrades on the car in a year, so almost all the parts are going to be changed between the first and last phase.

On top of that, setup varies a lot by circuit. If you look at Monza versus Monaco, the car can be almost completely different: same parts, but a completely different car. We push the setup on the track as well.

In Canada, for example, the car fared quite well in Q1, but we didn’t want to leave it at that, because maybe there’s an extra two tenths [of a second] to find. Then in Q2 we find we went a bit too extreme, so we refined again for FP3, still trying to beat FP1. So, there’s a lot of back-and-forth on the track to find the limits of the car and extract all the performance we can from it.

Scott Mansell: These changes you’re making to the toe or camber can make a huge difference in performance and drivability. How often are you making them?

Morgan Maia: There isn’t much time during a race weekend, so a lot happens in the simulator. Our drivers spend days (and sometimes nights) running laps to define the theoretical best setup. Then we reconcile that with driver preference and feel.

Alba Colón: We’re similar regarding simulators, except we can’t make trackside changes with measurement tools like you can. We only get 20–25 minutes of practice, so that’s maybe three changes at most.

At the track, you go through inspection once. If you fail, you get a second chance with the scanner. Fail again and you start losing team members or starting positions, and on some tracks that’s really not great.

Sometimes a driver goes out, does a few laps and then says, “It’s good, so don’t touch it!” And I think that’s because they’re worried we might make things worse if we chase those little changes. Of course, we always want more practice—we used to have two hours!—but now it’s 20 minutes and those are the rules of the game, so we have to do our best to take advantage of what we have in front of us.

Scott Mansell: You mentioned that you’re not allowed to take measurement equipment to the circuit, so what does the process look like when it comes back from the factory? Is it checked then or when it has a new setup for the next race?

Alba Colón: So before the car goes on the track, it goes through a scanner for a 90-second scan that’s mandated by NASCAR. Based on the color map and the tolerances, you’re cleared to race. Then, when the vehicle comes back, we scan it again to see what moved based on what we did at the track.

Within a couple of hours, the whole car is pulled apart and we take photos of measurements of everything to decide which parts will stay and which will be scrapped. By that time, the car that’s going out for the next weekend is already finished and we’re already assembling another vehicle two or three weeks in advance, so there’s constant measurement to make sure everything is working.

Scott Mansell: With such quick turnarounds, the speed of engineering must be critical.

Alba Colón: Very critical. When I left the shop last week, we were already working on the car for a race a month from now, and it’s pretty much ready. So we’re moving parts really, really quickly. If you want a job in racing, and you’re in quality control or manufacturing, trust me: we’re looking for you.

Scott Mansell: John, when your cars come back to the factory, what does that process look like for you?

John Church: Very similar to what Alba was saying. When the car comes back, the first thing we do is scan it just to see how much everything has changed from the start of the weekend. Of course, damage is always obvious, but even where there isn’t any damage, just seeing if anything moved and taking note of it to make adjustments is crucial for going forward.

I think what we’re all trying to do here is control as many variables as we can so that we can guarantee repeatability from one car to the next, one race to the next. That makes everybody’s job a lot easier because it takes the guesswork out of it.

The post Motorsport engineering insights appeared first on Engineering.com.

The AMUG Conference is a unique assembly of users of all experience levels who come together as a community to share valuable insights and experiences to help one another. The users exchange expertise, best practices, real-world results, and challenges, while also exploring new applications, through both formal presentations and informal conversations during breaks, meals, and networking activities.

AMUG crafts the conference program to promote participation from early in the morning through the evening. The user-driven agenda includes presentations, workshops, AMUGexpo, and evening activities with catered meals.

Shannon VanDeren, president, said, “We are very excited about AMUG 2026. It will blend staples that have made the conference so impactful for additive manufacturing users with changes that will elevate the experience.” She continued, “Every aspect of the conference is devised to help users grow and operations excel.”

In 2026, the AMUG Conference will maintain its foundation of networking and collaboration while incorporating modifications based on member feedback. Responding to those requests, AMUG has relocated the conference to Reno, Nevada, added more hands-on and immersive training, and modified the agenda’s topical session tracks. Additionally, the Start-up Launchpad, which was introduced in 2025, will be a component of its AMUGexpo.

The AMUG Conference will offer keynotes, panel discussions, educational sessions, and hands-on workshops to help users maximize their additive manufacturing expertise and excellence. Two modifications to the 2026 program will significantly increase the quantity of hands-on educational opportunities.

AMUG has introduced Training Labs where conference sponsors will provide “under-the-hood” deep dives, training sessions, and workshops, creating a truly immersive environment for learning and engagement. Additionally, AMUG has dedicated a large, flexible space throughout the week to its hands-on workshops, which will allow for more of these member-praised activities.

VanDeren said, “Hands-on workshops are a key feature of our event that enhance the learning experience. They complement the many hours of technical sessions by providing an engaging learning experience that improves retention, fosters creativity, and promotes critical-thinking skills.” 

Member feedback also spurred a revamping of the session tracks for the educational presentations and panel discussions. Reflecting changes in the additive manufacturing industry’s alignment to focus on applications and vertical markets, the agenda now features 14 tracks that are representative of today’s primary areas of focus.

After many years in Chicago, Illinois, the conference will be in Reno, Nevada, at the Grand Sierra Resort. Located near Reno-Tahoe International Airport, the resort provides 200,000 square feet of meeting space and 2,000 guest rooms.

Nate Schumacher, vice president, said, “This year’s location offers a fresh, open, modern experience. For example, the Summit Pavilion provides an upgraded layout and improved traffic flow to enhance engagement during our AMUGexpo.”

VanDeren said about Grand Sierra Resort, “It is a spectacular venue for a conference. It has a terrific layout. The meeting rooms are conveniently located and ideal for presentations, panel discussions and workshops. The ballroom will easily accommodate our large gathering. And the food is great.”

The 2026 conference will host the AMUGexpo on Sunday (March 15), Monday and Tuesday evenings. The AMUGexpo features companies with solutions dedicated to additive manufacturing that wish to engage with experienced, informed users to build connections and elevate knowledge. Returning in 2026, the Start-up Launchpad will host up to 10 newcomers on the expo floor to provide them with exposure to AMUG’s community.

Kicking off the conference, AMUG will convene its annual New Member Welcome get-together. Claire Belson Barnes, director of membership, said, “The New Member Welcome is AMUG’s way of bringing new participants into the fold. First-time attendees will learn tips and tricks for a successful conference and mingle with industry veterans and long-time AMUG volunteers.” The AMUG Conference will close with its annual Family Dinner on Thursday night.

A highlight of the conference program will be the eleventh annual Innovators Showcase. The showcase is an on-stage interview with the feel of a fireside chat where attendees get to know an industry innovator and discover insights from that individual’s experiences. The showcase serves as both a means to recognize the innovator and provide attendees with insight into their journey.

VanDeren said, “It is a spectacular way to recognize an individual whose distinct creativity has advanced the additive manufacturing industry.” The recipient of the Innovators Award, who will be the featured guest, will be announced in September.

The five-day event includes the Wednesday evening Special Event and Dinner, networking receptions, catered meals, and beverages. The all-inclusive conference registration fee is $1,295.00 through December 12, 2025. Companies interested in participating as sponsors or exhibitors are encouraged to sign up early since space is limited.

For details and registration, visit the AMUG website.

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However, thanks to the work of a group of engineers and neuroscientists, there may be a way to address one of the biggest challenges in addressing spinal cord injuries: regrowing nerve fibers. A research team at the University of Minnesota recently published their latest work on combining 3D printing with stem cell biology and lab grown tissues to tackle this issue.

Their approach involves creating a 3D printed framework for lab-grown organs, called an organoid scaffold, with microscopic channels populated with regionally specific spinal neural progenitor cells.

“We use the 3D printed channels of the scaffold to direct the growth of the stem cells, which ensures the new nerve fibers grow in the desired way,” said Guebum Han in a University of Minnesota press release. “This method creates a relay system that when placed in the spinal cord bypasses the damaged area.” Han is a former mechanical engineering postdoctoral researcher and first author on the published research. 

When the researchers transplanted these scaffolds into rats with surgically severed spinal cords, the cells inside them differentiated into neurons and extended their nerve fibers toward the rats’ heads and tails, forming new connections with existing nerves. According to the researchers, these new cells integrated seamlessly into the hosts’ spinal cord tissue over time, resulting in significant functional recoveries.

“Regenerative medicine has brought about a new era in spinal cord injury research,” said Ann Parr, professor of neurosurgery at the University of Minnesota in the same release. “Our laboratory is excited to explore the future potential of our ‘mini spinal cords’ for clinical translation.”

The team hopes to scale up production and continue developing this combination of technologies for future clinical applications. The results are published via open access in the journal Advanced Healthcare Materials.

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