Manufacturing & Prototyping

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3D Printing Stronger, Lighter Metal Works for Automotive & Aerospace Industries

A Purdue University innovation that produces stronger, lighter metal parts that work for the automotive and aerospace industries through a 3D printing technology is being commercialized through Frontier Additive Manufacturing LLC, a Crawfordsville, Indiana-based company. "We are commercializing a multiple-laser method to create products at the micro-structural level that exceeds current 3D printing capabilities' structural integrity with the ability to adjust material properties in the original location of the part, " says the company's president, Eric Lynch. Frontier Additive Manufacturing's technology will be able to create a finished product in one setup from a CAD design that can be used to replace worn parts in manufacturing with drop-in capabilities where no other modifications are needed for the replacement part to function as an original. The patented technology was developed in the laboratories of Gary Cheng, a Purdue University associate professor of industrial engineering and Yung Shim, a Purdue professor of mechanical engineering.