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Siemens Meet at the Machine: Be productive from day one of new CNC machine delivery

Traditionally, many programming, validation, and training activities begin only after a machine is installed. Not anymore. Meet at the Machine is Siemens' new initiative uniting machine builders, software, and automation for next-level CNC through a continuous digital thread across engineering, programming, virtual validation, and execution. By pairing a Digital Twin with Digital CNC powered by SINUMERIK, manufacturers can prepare, validate, train, and optimize workflows before your specialized machine's physical delivery! TRAK Machine Tools is the launch partner -- see what they are doing.
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How to master metal powder management in 3D printing

What's the real cost of "good enough" powder tracking for powder-bed fusion 3D-printing machines? According to Tim Wischeropp, CEO and Co-Founder of amsight, the technology is rife with hidden costs. Every cycle, every handling step, every exposure, and every mixing decision plays a part. Surprisingly, though, with the right strategy, users can turn their losses into a competitive edge. Learn how.
Read the full article.

Aluminum oxide filament for FDM printers

Virtual Foundry, the company that brought us 3D-printable lunar regolith simulant, has a new product called Aluminum Oxide Filamet™, giving users the power to print alumina parts using the FDM printers they already own. This composite 3D-printing material allows researchers, engineers, and makers to bypass expensive ceramic tooling and produce pure ceramic components in-house. Print using a 0.6-mm hardened-steel, standard-flow nozzle on virtually any open-architecture printer.
Get all the material specs.

New metal extrusion retrofit system helps manufacturers get into ShAPE

A new invention from the Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory could soon help manufacturers more easily adopt the lab's patented Shear Assisted Processing and Extrusion (ShAPE™) technology, enabling faster manufacturing of superior extrusion products while reducing costs and energy use.
Read the full article.

Pneumatics: Dual guide rod cylinders and exhaust silencers

Automation-Direct has expanded its guided actuator lineup with compact 12-mm dual guide rod cylinders from Metal Work. Ideal for packaging and material handling, these double-acting cylinders feature 10-mm to 250-mm strokes, magnetic pistons, and integral sensor slots. Additionally, new durable acetal plastic silencers are now available in multiple NPT/BSPP sizes to reduce pneumatic exhaust noise.
Learn more.

Expanded injection molding capabilities

Pexco LLC has acquired Recto Molded Products and Legacy Extrusions, expanding its capabilities in complex injection molding, tooling, assembly, and engineered thermoplastic solutions for OEM manufacturers. The Cincinnati-based companies bring more than a century of manufacturing expertise, advanced production technologies, and value-added services that strengthen Pexco's ability to support customers from product design through full-scale production. Injection molding presses ranging from 55 to 500 tons.
Learn about Pexco and its value-added manufacturing services.

Custom 3D-printed steering wheel for jet dragster

Jet dragsters use General Electric J85 engines -- the same turbines pulled from U.S. military F5 Freedom Fighters -- mounted to a custom 26-ft chassis. The racers achieve quarter-miles in 5.5 sec, but standard metal parts can fail custom ergonomic needs. Traditional manufacturing of low-volume aluminum steering wheels demands long, 8-day lead times, high costs, and multi-piece assemblies. Larsen Motorsports solved this by replacing metal with continuous fiber 3D printing using the Markforged X7. Embedding continuous carbon fiber into an Onyx nylon matrix allowed them to target specific load paths, delivering a custom steering wheel that is stiffer, lighter, and faster to produce than aluminum.
View the video.

Application Spotlight: Light-duty ring in an air vent nozzle

Explore how a light-duty Spirolox^® retaining ring is used in an airplane air vent nozzle to regulate airflow. This application spotlight shows how the ring fits into a groove in the plastic housing, securing the nozzle during rotation. Designed for light loads and axial positioning, it offers a simple, economical solution that is easy to install and remove.
View this informative Smalley video.

Fasteners for automotive and agricultural equipment

Norm Fasteners has acquired an automotive fastener manufacturing plant in Plymouth, MI, expanding its North American footprint beyond sales, engineering, and logistics. The local facility produces metric fasteners (M4-M24) and engine bolts. Norm’s portfolio includes wheel bolts, studs, custom fasteners, and licensed MAThread^® and TAPTITE^® products, serving diverse automotive and industrial assembly needs.
Learn more or contact Belgin Tunce for more information.

3M Cooling Film for vehicle roofs launched

New 3M Cooling Film is a roof-applied heat-management solution designed to help keep vehicle cabins cooler, reduce cooling demand, and improve operational efficiency. The aftermarket product uses advanced thermal management technology to reflect more than 85% of solar radiation. Interior vehicle temperatures can be reduced by up to 10 degrees F with this product. Installs like graphics by professional installers using 3M adhesive technologies. Initially designed for fleet and rail operators.
Learn more.

Test your knowledge: High-temp adhesives

Put your knowledge to the test by trying to answer these key questions on how to choose the right high-temperature-resistant adhesive. The technical experts from Master Bond cover critical information necessary for the selection process, including questions on glass transition temperature and service temperature range. Some of the answers may surprise even the savviest of engineers.
Take the quiz.

New Air Holster Safety Air Gun Mount

EXAIR's new Model 5930 Air Holster provides a simple and convenient way to keep Safety Air Guns secure and within easy reach at workstations throughout a facility. Designed to give operators a designated location for their air gun when not in use, the Air Holster helps prevent misplaced tools while keeping work areas organized and efficient. Its practical design makes it an ideal addition to manufacturing, assembly, maintenance, and other industrial workstations where Safety Air Guns are frequently used.
Learn more.

Southco access hardware in rail applications

Discover how Southco's rail access hardware solutions help improve safety, reliability, and operational efficiency across modern rail networks. The video showcases a range of rail applications where Southco's access hardware plays a critical role, including driver cabins, lighting systems, tray tables, headrests, armrests, and other passenger and operator touchpoints. Designed to support dependable performance in demanding moving environments, Southco's solutions help operators streamline maintenance processes, minimize downtime, and enable more proactive asset management.
View the video.

Multi-zone tension leveler for hard-to-flatten alloys

Redex USA's Levelflex^® is a modular, multi-zone tension leveler engineered for continuous processing lines, including coating and heat treatment of aluminum alloys and where flatness is critical to coating adhesion and downstream formability. By stretching material within 95% of its yield strength, it corrects stubborn flatness defects in fewer passes. It comes in open-loop pure stretch or closed-loop tension measurement modes to optimize surface integrity and eliminate crossbow.
Learn more.

Hold any shape with ID and OD Form Holding Clamps

These simple OD and ID clamping solutions from Fixtureworks clamp onto your part in one easy operation, eliminating the need for custom fixtures. They allow users to clamp onto the inner or outer diameter of small-size, irregularly shaped work parts fast. Lots of options.
Learn more.

AI reveals new way to strengthen titanium alloys and speed up manufacturing

Brendan Croom, a senior materials scientist at Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, is pictured in APL's X-ray Computed Tomography Lab, where high-res imaging helps researchers analyze additively manufactured materials. Croom and his team are using AI to optimize titanium alloy production. [Credit: Johns Hopkins APL/Ed Whitman]

 

 

 

 

By Paulette Campbell, Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory

Producing high-performance titanium alloy parts -- whether for spacecraft, submarines, or medical devices -- has long been a slow, resource-intensive process. Even with advanced metal 3D-printing techniques, finding the right manufacturing conditions has required extensive testing and fine-tuning.

What if these parts could be built more quickly, stronger, and with near-perfect precision?

A team comprising experts from the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, MD, and the Johns Hopkins Whiting School of Engineering is leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) to make that a reality. They've identified processing techniques that improve both the speed of production and the strength of these advanced materials -- an advance with implications from the deep sea to outer space.

"The nation faces an urgent need to accelerate manufacturing to meet the demands of current and future conflicts," said Morgan Trexler, program manager for Science of Extreme and Multifunctional Materials in APL's Research and Exploratory Development Mission Area. "At APL, we are advancing research in laser-based additive manufacturing to rapidly develop mission-ready materials, ensuring that production keeps pace with evolving operational challenges."

The findings, recently published in the journal Additive Manufacturing, focus on Ti-6Al-4V, a widely used titanium alloy known for its high strength and low weight. The team leveraged AI-driven models to map out previously unexplored manufacturing conditions for laser powder bed fusion, a method of 3D printing metal. The results challenge long-held assumptions about process limits, revealing a broader processing window for producing dense, high-quality titanium with customizable mechanical properties.

The discovery provides a new way to think about materials processing, said co-author Brendan Croom.

"For years, we assumed that certain processing parameters were 'off-limits' for all materials because they would result in poor-quality end product," said Croom, a senior materials scientist at APL. "But by using AI to explore the full range of possibilities, we discovered new processing regions that allow for faster printing while maintaining -- or even improving -- material strength and ductility, the ability to stretch or deform without breaking. Now, engineers can select the optimal processing settings based on their specific needs."

These findings hold promise for industries that rely on high-performance titanium parts. The ability to manufacture stronger, lighter components at greater speeds could improve efficiency in shipbuilding, aviation, and medical devices. It also contributes to a broader effort to advance additive manufacturing for aerospace and defense.

Researchers at the Whiting School of Engineering, including Somnath Ghosh, are integrating AI-driven simulations to better predict how additively manufactured materials will perform in extreme environments. Ghosh co-leads one of two NASA Space Technology Research Institutes (STRIs), a collaboration between Johns Hopkins and Carnegie Mellon focused on developing advanced computational models to accelerate material qualification and certification. The goal is to reduce the time required to design, test, and validate new materials for space applications -- a challenge that closely aligns with APL's efforts to refine and accelerate titanium manufacturing.

A major leap forward
This breakthrough builds on years of work at APL to advance additive manufacturing. When Steve Storck, the chief scientist for manufacturing technologies in APL's Research and Exploratory Development Department, arrived at the Laboratory in 2015, he recognized the practice had its limits.

"Back then, one of the biggest barriers to using additive manufacturing across the Department of Defense was materials availability -- each design required a specific material, but robust processing conditions didn't exist for most of them," Storck recalled. "Titanium was one of the few that met DoD needs and had been optimized to match or exceed traditional manufacturing performance. We knew we had to expand the range of materials and refine processing parameters to fully unlock additive manufacturing's potential."

APL spent years refining additive manufacturing, focusing on defect control and material performance. In 2021, the APL team published a study in the Johns Hopkins APL Technical Digest examining how defects impact mechanical properties. Around the same time, Storck's team was developing a rapid material optimization framework, an effort that led to a patent filed in 2020.

This framework -- designed to significantly accelerate the optimization of processing conditions -- provided a strong foundation for the latest study. Building on that groundwork, the team leveraged machine learning to explore an unprecedented range of processing parameters, something that would have been impractical with traditional trial-and-error methods.

The approach revealed a high-density processing regime previously dismissed due to concerns about material instability. With targeted adjustments, the team unlocked new ways to process Ti-6Al-4V, long optimized for laser powder bed fusion.

"We're not just making incremental improvements," Storck said. "We're finding entirely new ways to process these materials, unlocking capabilities that weren't previously considered. In a short amount of time, we discovered processing conditions that pushed performance beyond what was thought possible."

AI finds the hidden patterns
Titanium's properties, like those of all materials, can be affected by the way the material is processed. Laser power, scan speed, and spacing between laser tracks determine how the material solidifies -- whether it becomes strong and flexible or brittle and flawed. Traditionally, finding the right combination required slow trial-and-error testing.

Instead of manually adjusting settings and waiting for results, the team trained AI models using Bayesian optimization, a machine learning technique that predicts the most promising next experiment based on prior data. By analyzing early test results and refining its predictions with each iteration, AI rapidly homed in on the best processing conditions -- allowing researchers to explore thousands of configurations virtually before testing a handful of them in the lab.

This approach allowed the team to quickly identify previously unused settings -- some of which had been dismissed in traditional manufacturing -- that could produce stronger, denser titanium. The results overturned long-held assumptions about which laser parameters yield the best material properties.

"This isn't just about manufacturing parts more quickly," Croom said. "It's about striking the right balance among strength, flexibility, and efficiency. AI is helping us explore processing regions we wouldn't have considered on our own."

Storck emphasized that the approach goes beyond improving titanium printing -- it customizes materials for specific needs. "Manufacturers often look for one-size-fits-all settings, but our sponsors need precision," he said. "Whether it's for a submarine in the Arctic or a flight component under extreme conditions, this technique lets us optimize for those unique challenges while maintaining the highest performance."

Croom added that expanding the machine learning model to predict even more complex material behaviors is another key goal. The team's early work looked at density, strength, and ductility, and Croom said it has eyes on modeling other important factors, like fatigue resistance or corrosion.

"This work has been a clear demonstration of the power of AI, high-throughput testing, and data-driven manufacturing," he said. "It used to take years of experimentation to understand how a new material would respond in our sponsor's relevant environments, but what if we could instead learn all of that in weeks and use that insight to rapidly manufacture enhanced alloys?"

New possibilities
The success of this research opens the door to even broader applications. The recently published paper focused on titanium, but the same AI-driven approach has been applied to other metals and manufacturing techniques, including alloys specifically developed to take advantage of additive manufacturing, Storck said.

One area of future exploration is so-called in-situ monitoring -- the ability to track and adjust the manufacturing process in real time. Storck described a vision where state-of-the-art metal additive manufacturing could be as seamless as 3D printing at home: "We envision a paradigm shift where future additive manufacturing systems can adjust as they print, ensuring perfect quality without the need for extensive post-processing, and that parts can be born qualified."

Published March 2025

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