At Ford’s Advanced Manufacturing Center, Javier is tasked with operating the 3D printers completely on his own. He is always on time, very precise in his movements, and he works most of the day – taking only a short break to charge up. This innovative robot on wheels from supplier KUKA, called Javier by Ford’s additive manufacturing operators, is integral to the company’s development of an industry-first process to operate 3D Carbon printers with an autonomous mobile robot rather than a fixed, stationary unit.
Applying their Materials by Design methodologies, QuesTek Innovations has expanded their ICME framework under US Army Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) funding to adapt their high-performance Ferrium C64 gear steel to AM processes to demonstrate printability across multiple systems, achieve AMS minimum tensile properties, and observe a positive response to heat treatment.
Writing about additive manufacturing (AM) and the 3-D printing of gears is somewhat akin to publishing an updated dictionary. A new edition dictionary is literally already out of date before it hits Amazon's
or your local bookseller's shelves. New words are coined and definitions are updated constantly. So it is with AM: The technology is evolving so quickly that technical papers and other sources of AM information require constant revision.