AMERICAN ENGINEERING & MANUFACTURING, INC. — Department of Defense SBIR Phase I: A16-023
AMERICAN ENGINEERING & MANUFACTURING, INC. — SBIR Phase I award from Department of Defense.
- Amount
- $99,733
- Agency
- Department of Defense · Army
- Program / Phase
- SBIR · Phase I
- Topic
- A16-023
- Solicitation
- 2016.1
- NAICS
- —
- Place of performance
- OH
- Period
- 2016-08-01 → 2017-01-31
Description
Our proposal provides the opportunity to develop a brand new process for the manufacture of additive manufacturing powder.Our project will combine induction heating and Lorenz force levitation to create and suspend a molten charge.This charge will be shaped as it leaves the melt chamber to form a stream.This stream will then be accelerated using Lorenz forces to a speed at which the cohesive forces are overcome and droplets form through burst atomization.The droplets will subsequently cool in a chamber where they will lose their latent heat of solidification and cool as powder.The nature of the de-gassing and subsequent atomization process is expected to produce uniform, high quality, spherical powder.Our system will be designed for continuous operation when working in conjunction with a system capable of feeding discrete quantities of base material into the melt chamber.When complete, it is expected that we will have developed a new generation of powder manufacturing machines that can be placed alongside existing additive manufacturing units to manufacture powder.