‘Single-Shot’ Manufacturing of Metals and Composites for Automotive Parts

Clemson University  automotive engineering researchers introduce a process called "hybrid single-shot manufacturing of metals and composites," which they say could reduce the time and cost it takes to manufacture some components. The process could also be automated with the help of artificial intelligence. One of the goals is to reduce the cost of making vehicles lighter, which improves their mileage, and helps automotive companies meet federal fuel efficiency standards. When some parts are made conventionally, one machine stamps sheet metal into the desired shape, and another machine creates polymer or composite parts. The separate pieces are then bonded together with glue. In the new process, it’s all done in one machine, and the technology can be used in existing equipment.

Transcript

00:00:00 [gentle beat music] The kind of invention that we have done in our lab, we believe it's gonna revolutionize the manufacturing industry. This is a single-shot manufacturing of dissimilar materials, hybrid materials. We have seen one process technology for manufacturing metals, one for composites, one for polymers,

00:00:23 but we have developed... We have integrated all of those things and we said, we're gonna use an existing infrastructure, but we can actually manufacture these multi-material structures using a single-shot method. The new term that we call it is affordable lightweight because if you provide a light weighting solution to transportation industry, but it's gonna cost a lot of dollars, no consumer is gonna buy.

00:00:44 We can reduce the cost of the lightweighting in this case, because hybrid structure, especially metal and polymer, it's one of the effective approach to do light weighting in several industry, especially in automotive industry. The future of transportation is definitely gonna be a multi-material structure. It's not gonna be a single material. So when you take all of this into consideration,

00:01:08 there's a lot of cycle time role that you have to play around. So this new technology that we have invented in the lab is not only gonna enable that reduction in the cycle time, but it also will have significant cost savings. The output is practical and attractive for industry. So it make me happy and it's very encouraging. [gentle beat music]