MT Magazine January/February 2025

JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2025

25

Convergent Manufacturing Platform at IMTS Moves AM Closer to a Tipping Point BY BONNIE GURNEY VICE PRESIDENT, STRATEGIC PARTNERSHIPS & INDUSTRY RELATIONS

What could the future of additive manufacturing (AM) look like? It promises to be efficient, local, automated, and immediate. In fact, it could look exactly like the jaw-dropping convergent manufacturing platform featured in AMT’s Emerging Technology Center (ETC) at IMTS 2024.

Conceived of by the Manufacturing Demonstration Facility (MDF) at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), the Future Foundries platform has a double meaning. “Foundries” stands for foundational research platform for the integration of emerging systems. It also encompasses the need to supplement U.S. casting capacity, create more robust supply chains, reduce energy consumption, and bring new efficiencies to tooling and mold production and metal part repair. As demonstrated in the ETC, the platform featured two metal AM systems from Lincoln Electric and exponentially grew their capabilities by orienting them around a Fastems FPT-500 automated pallet tower and integrating the capabilities of a 5-axis MU4000V machining center from Okuma, an Ajax Tocco induction heating system, a vision system from Zeiss, and four robots from Yaskawa America. “The team from ORNL did such a good job integrating technologies and solving problems that I believe we could see a convergent manufacturing platform in U.S. production facilities in two or three years,” said Doug Woods, president of AMT. “This approach is perfect for job shops because it can produce multiple different parts with easily programmable changeovers. Then, if you wanted a longer part run, you could let the system run unattended overnight.”