Recipient Organization
RAPID MADE, INC.
15883 SW 72ND AVENUE
PORTLAND,OR 972247913
Performing Department
(N/A)
Non Technical Summary
The long term project aims to promote and improve the sustainability and profitability of small and mid-size farms.Farmers have acontinuous need for custom replacement components or custom parts and often rely on a poor supply chain that offers expensive spare parts or no availability at all for older equipment. Those parts may have various applications such as irrigation, handling and storage, feeding of animals, packing, manipulator for harvesting and replacement components for a variety of light and heavy equipment. Replacement parts for older and out-of-production equipment constitute a critical challenge often forcing farmers to make expensive purchases that could be avoided if custom replacement parts would be available.Recent technological advancements in 3D printing have dramatically reduced the production cost and cycle time associated with additive manufacturing. These developments have allowed greater adoption of the technology beyond prototyping into finished-part production. While this breakthrough has accelerated market penetration, farming applications often requirecomponents that are much larger than current 3D printers can produce or require materials that are much stronger than those presently available.This project aims to address this critical need in the farming community by creating lightweight, high strength components using hybrid 3D printing and long fiber composite materials. In addition this project aims tocreate amanufacturing process that enables these materials to be fashioned into affordable components at or close to point of use.Ultimately this will providefarmers with a source of low-cost and fast-delivery custom components based on specific requirements including replacement parts for older equipment, new components to improve efficiency and reduce operating and energy costs, and a localized source to supply these parts. Design and manufacturing will operate in small-scale operations centers localized in a central area which can service a significant number of local small farms.Since the technology will use digital part file storage and be based on off-the-shelf small manufacturing machines, it could be technically feasible and economically advantageous to locate the manufacturing center at a small farm.The project builds on work that has been extensively applied to creating lightweight, high strength components for the aerospace and automotive industries but utliizing 3D printed polymers and long fiber reinforcement which will beless expensive than current methodologies and more appicable to the array of components utilized in the farming, agricultural and horticultural environment. The practical applications will be focused on reducingthe farm operating costs, increasing energy utlization and efficiency, extending the useful life of existing machinery and creating new agriculture based mechanical and fluidic component based solutions.Hybrid 3D printed plastic and long-fiber reinforced components will be the final product of the proposed work together with a procedure for the entire design and manufacturing cycle that will enable farmers to produce a vast array of structural graded components for a variety of critical applications.The first phase of the project will investigate the scientific aspects of creating the composite, the technical aspects of designing components that utilize the composite and the application aspects of applying the components to small and mid-size farming needs.The proposed research will be divided into threeparts: 1) Characterization of the microstructure and interface, 2) Analysis of the mechanical properties of the hybrid structure and 3) Investigation of suitable parts and applications to test the compositesRapidMade was launched in late 2011, in large part, as a means to localize manufacturing and combat the wave of offshore manufacturing. As an early adopter, the firm's founders have observed the swift progress 3D printing has made in this decade. Since its inception, RapidMade's additive manufacturing-based revenue hasincreased and the company continues to serve small and medium size businesses who need creative solutions to their everyday needs. With the introduction of newer 3D printing technologies and the company's work on hybrid solutions, along with its partnership with Oregon State University, the company is well positioned to address the needs of the farming community. Oregon State University has done extensive scientific research work in the application of long fiber reinforced composites.The proposal addresses USDA NIFA SBIR Program Priorities in three fundamental and related ways as follows:1. Manufacturing: The proposed manufacturing technology for custom structural 3D printed components will be operated 100% in the United States from design of the required components to the final actual production.2. Energy efficiency: Manufacturing of components will be processed at a location central to an area with a significant number of small farms, thus minimizing shipping distances, energy for transportation and emissions of green-house gases.3. Alternative and renewable energy: The proposed small-scale design and manufacturing centers are characterized by a low energy demand thus it will be feasible to employ renewable energy for their operations minimizing their carbon footprint or to be carbon-neutral.Moreover the proposed activity will be in line with the President issued Executive Order 13329 (69 FR 9181) entitled "Encouraging Innovation in Manufacturing" issued on February 26, 2004.
Animal Health Component
0%
Research Effort Categories
Basic
0%
Applied
70%
Developmental
30%
Goals / Objectives
The project aims toimprove the sustainability and profitability of small and mid-size farms by establishing practical manufacturing processes for long fiber-reiniforced 3D printed components, using currently available technologies, that can be used to supply custom made components and spare parts for machinery and devices commonly used in these farms. The practical applications will be focused on reducingthe farm operating costs,increasing energy utlization and efficiency, extending the useful life of existing machinery and creating new agriculture based mechanical and fluidic component solutions.Hybrid 3D printed plastic and long-fiber reinforced components will be the final product of the proposed work together with a procedure for the entire design and manufacturing cycle that will enable farmers to produce a vast array of structural graded components for a variety of critical applications.The project will investigate the scientific aspects of creating the composite,the technical aspects of designing components that utilize the composite, andthe application aspects of applying the components to small and mid-size farms.The proposed research will be divided into two parts: 1) How reliable the bonding between 3D printed plastic and long fiber reinforcement will be and 2) How the two components can be combined in an efficient and simple composites manufacturing process. The scientific research will focus on characterizing the bond relationships, the mechanical properties of the composites and the limitations of the materials for the intended applications. The technical research will focus on identifying the mechanical properties, engineering and manufacturing requirements. Existing, currently used, components will be benchmarked fortheir suitability for replacement with the new composite materials.Objectives will be:Determine the effects of changing the processingparameters onthe 3D printed microstructure and obtain an optimal set of parameters for required porosity.Evaluate the impact of changing themanufacturing process onthe crosslinking between epoxy and nylon 12 and determine the optimal set of parameters required to provide the required bond strength.Understand the interface morphology between the nylon 12 and expoxy and assess the depth of the interdiffused region that is attainable, determine if this is a significant factor for the required properties of the composite.Investigate the effects of crosslinking on the overall strength of the composite material by testing the the resistance to peel strength, determine the impact to strength whencapped and uncapped.Identify three to four test parts and compare the impact of fiber reinforcement to non reinforced components. Determine the relative strength of these components while varying temerpature and moisture environmental conditions.Evaluate the composite material fatigue usingtension/compression and flexural fatigue testing to determine the specific performance characteristicsAssess the impact of fiber over-strain and their buckling during manufacturing of the composite, determine the effect on the mechanical strength of the composite sample.
Project Methods
The research program will be split into two parts, 1) analysis of the interactions between 3D printed nylon 12 and epoxy system, and 2) mechanical properties of the 3D printed nylon 12 and the fiber reinforced nylon 12 composite.Part 1:a) Microstructure of 3D printed nylon 12Multijet 3D printed parts are fabricated using non-spherical thermoplastic microparticles that range from 30-100 μm in size To estimatethe porosity of multijet nylon 12 parts, samples will be microtomed, or cut into thin translucent slices, which will allow them to be analyzed using light microscopy. Software packages such as ImageJ can then be used to assess the total porosity and average pore size for each slice. Additionally, the effect of changing printing parameters such as the amount of fusing agent deposited, number of passes of the fusing lamp, and the speed of powder spreading for each new layer on the total porosity will be evaluated. Ideally, changing one of these parameters while keeping the others constant will have an observable effect on the total porosity of the samples.b) Crosslinking in 3D printed nylon 12/epoxy systemEpoxies are an important class of polymeric materials widely used as structural adhesives and matrices for composite materials.In epoxy/nylon adhesives, the epoxide group of the epoxy resin and the amide nitrogen of nylon can react to form a crosslinked structure. Crosslinking in 3D printed nylon 12/epoxy system will be investigated using thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) and dynamic scanning calorimetry (DSC). Additionally, in DSC the melting temperature and crystallization temperature of the nylon decreases with increasing epoxy concentration. Different levels of crosslinking will be obtained by changing manufacturing process and their effects on bonding and material characteristics evaluatedc) Morphology of nylon 12/epoxy interfaceFiber reinforced composites are an increasingly important class of materials due to the need to increase specific stiffness and strength. However, one of the main limiting aspects is the ability to join composite components with thermoplastic or metallic materials. Adhesive bonding using epoxy is the most popular method currently employed. Since a strong thermoplastic-thermoset interface is important, a deep understanding of the underlying physical and chemical aspects of the hybrid structure is critical, The interactions between the thermoplastic and thermoset are complex.The interface morphology and extent of penetration of epoxy into the nylon 12 substrate can be visualized using scanning electron microscopy (SEM). Additionally, SEM with energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (SEM-EDX) could also be used to assess the depth of interdiffused region of epoxy and nylon 12.d) Inhibition of crosslinking and its effects on strengthTo investigate the effect of crosslinking on the overall strength of the composite materials, the reactive amide nitrogen of nylon 12 will be capped with small molecular weight epoxides. The samples will be analyzed using adhesive peel testing to determine the resistance-to-peel strength for capped and uncapped samples (ASTM, 2016). As a result, there should be a significant decrease in the resistance-to-peel strength for the capped samples due to the reduction of covalent crosslinking and reliance on weaker van der Waals forces for adhesion.Part 2:a) Load StrengthAlthough there are various claims of the availability of 3D printed parts with fiber reinforcements,they are available only with reinforcements in powder thus with strong limitations in strength andstiffness, making the components not useful for highly loaded parts. Work will build on existingresearch conducted bythe PD's laboratory on hybrid 3D printed fibers reinforced materials and fiberreinforced polymer (FRP) composites in general to test tensile strength and elongation.b) Engineered porosity of fiber reinforced nylon 12 compositesIn addition to understanding how the inherent porosity effects the mechanical properties of 3D printed materials, it may also be advantageous to incorporate intentionally porous structures to decrease the mass of the structure while not decreasing strength. It has been previously demonstrated that 3D printed samples with patterned hollow structuresshowed higher tensile strengths and specific tensile strengths than their solid counterparts.Tensile samples with similar geometries will be printed and tested to see if engineered porous samples work with our multijet 3D printing system.c) Environmental impact on mechanical propertiesThe mechanical properties of the composite need to be consistent when materials are subjected to different environmental conditions. Two of the most importance factors are temperature and water absorption . To assess the effect of time on the mechanical properties of 3D printed nylon 12, tensile samples will be printed and tested at multiple time intervals under controlled temperature and moisture conditions. If severe degradation in materials behavior is observed, additional experiments with waterproof sealants will be performed.d) Fatigue BehaviorFatigue behavior for3D printed materials is not well known. The fatigue characteristics of the hybrid composite therefore is unknown and it will be briefly studied. To investigate the fatigue behavior of 3D printed nylon 12 materials, samples will be subjected to tension/compression fatigue testing (ASTM D7791, 2017) and flexural fatigue testing (ASTM D7774, 2017) Hybrid sandwich structures will also be analyzed using three-point bend flexural fatigue testing.d) Fiber layer reinforcement ImpactsOne potential problem with laying fibers reinforcement on 3D printed plastic parts could be the over-strain of fibers and their buckling while in the manufacturing phase. The PD lab studied theaxial instability of compressed fibers during the molding process that may occur during plies layup, potentially causing fibers microbuckling and wrinkling. The phenomenon can potentially adversely affect manufacturing efficiency, product design and the quality of laminates.Preliminary validation of FEA modeling performed by the PD's lab of 3D printed components were performed for an early research sponsored by Hewlett Packard (Hu, 2016). Results showed the importance of considering the anisotropic characteristics of the printed plastic due to the direction of printing. This factor will be taken in consideration in the proposed work.