A leading industry publication on additive manufacturing featured QuesTek Innovations as a pioneer in designing new alloys for additive manufacturing in aerospace. 3DPrint.com interviewed Executive Vice President of Market Operations Jason Sebastian, PhD on the challenges of making printable alloys for use on rockets and in the extreme conditions of space. Here are some highlights from the detailed feature.
It’s Not Hardware, It’s the Materials
QuesTek has been a leader in the design of alloys for decades, well before rocket builders aimed to use 3D printers to bring down manufacturing costs. The article explores how the additive manufacturing process results in a different structure than traditional manufacturing.
“It’s a whole new paradigm of material science. You’ve got to make it into a powder, and then you’ve got to print it, which is kind of like a very rapid solidification. And so that leads to really interesting things with the material and the microstructure. It’s not a surprise that alloys that were designed for regular casting or forging don’t quite operate the same way in additive,” Sebastian says. “So, you need to design new materials for additive.”
Materials by Design Technology
QuesTek Innovations is tackling the bottleneck in aerospace AM and making real performance gains with its proprietary materials design and engineering software, ICMDⓇ. “We built models around rapid solidification, microstructure and expected strength, then used limited test data to estimate how strength would vary across builds and powder lots. Our models allow us to establish that minimum, with much less experimental data.”
Moving at a Rocket Pace
QuesTek recently worked with rocket startup Stoke Space in an effort to use AM in building a fully reusable orbital rocket. The collaboration resulted in a new nickel superalloy that balanced strength and burn resistance … in less than 12 months!
“Printability is a property like strength and like burn resistance. There are trade-offs. That’s the QuesTek lens in one line. If the industry keeps trying to push yesterday’s alloys through today’s additive processes, it will keep hitting walls,” Sebastian says. “But if more companies design metals specifically for additive manufacturing, especially for rocket engines and other extreme environments, 3D printing becomes something completely different. Not just a faster way to make parts. But a faster way to invent what parts can be made of in the first place.”
Read the full article here: QuesTek’s Space Bet: New Alloys Built for 3D Printing, Not for the Old Rules