Voxel Innovations, Inc. — Department of Defense SBIR Phase I: AF191-096

Voxel Innovations, Inc. — SBIR Phase I award from Department of Defense.

Amount
$149,804
Agency
Department of Defense · Air Force
Program / Phase
SBIR · Phase I
Topic
AF191-096
Solicitation
19.1
NAICS
Place of performance
NC
Period
2019-06-17 → 2020-06-17

Description

Electrochemical machining (ECM) is known for its high material removal rate, superior surface quality, non-contact processing, and the ability to operate on many challenging metal alloys. Despite these advantages, ECM remains a niche technique as design engineers are timid to make use of it given its associated price tag for initial tool development. Tool development cost, primarily driven by the design iteration process, can be lowered by a reduction in tool iterations and/or a reduction in iteration cost. The growing prevalence of metal 3D printing (AM) has the potential to achieve both of these ends. AM reduces traditional design-for-manufacturing barriers and lowers the cost of tool fabrication. The proposed Phase 1 effort will explore electrolyte flow concepts that are made more practical by AM technology and will use the improved methodology to produce a mock small-scale turbine vane geometry.