NEWS BRIEFS
The schools were chosen through a competitive selec-
tion process from groups entered in the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Robotics Challenge. MIT’s proposal, “Robust Autonomy for Extreme Space
Environments” was made by an MIT Computer Science and Artifi cial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) team led by principal investigator Russ Tedrake. The other winning proposal, “Accessible Testing on Humanoid-Robot-R5 and Evaluation of NASA Adminis- tered (ATHENA) Space Robotics Challenge,” was from a Northeastern University team led by principal investigator Taskin Padir. “Advances in robotics, including human-robotic col-
laboration, are critical to developing the capabilities required for our journey to Mars,” said Steve Jurczyk, associate administrator for the Space Technology Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “We are excited to engage these university research groups to help NASA with this next big step in robotics technology development.”
Laserless ‘inkjet’ printing of 3D metals and alloys
A
team of Northwestern University (Evanston, IL) engineers created a new way to print 3D metallic objects using rust and metal powders.
While current methods rely on vast metal powder beds and expensive lasers or electron beams, Northwestern’s
technique uses liquid inks and common furnaces, resulting in a cheaper, faster, and more uniform process. The Northwestern team also demonstrated that the new method works for an extensive variety of metals, metal mixtures, alloys, and metal oxides and compounds. “This is exciting because most advanced manufacturing methods being used for metallic printing are limited as far as which metals and alloys can be printed and what types of architecture can be created,” said Ramille Shah, assis- tant professor of materials science and engineering, who led the study.
“Our method greatly expands the architectures and
metals we’re able to print, which really opens the door for a lot of diff erent applications,” he said. Conventional methods for 3D printing metallic struc-
tures are both time- and cost-intensive. The process takes a very intense energy source that moves across a bed of metal powder, defi ning an object’s architecture in a single layer by fusing powder particles together. New powder is placed on top of the previous layer, and these steps are repeated to create a 3D object. Any unfused powder is subsequently removed, which prevents cer- tain architectures, such as those that are hollow and enclosed, from being created. This method is also sig- nifi cantly limited by the types of compatible metals and alloys that can be used. Northwestern Engineering’s method bypasses the
powder bed and energy beam approach. It also uncouples the two-step process of printing the structure and fusing
A copper lattice structure created with Northwestern Engineering’s new 3D printing process.
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Spring 2016 Photo courtesy Northwestern University
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