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This research reports on the findings of a study carried out through a multidisciplinary partnership comprising the following higher education and cultural and community organisations: School of Engineering at Lancaster University, Lancaster City Museums and Galloways, a sight-loss charity. An overarching aim of the Touch & See project was to increase accessibility of 2D historical artefacts to those with sight impairment, with the use of additive manufacturing (AM). There are significant engagement barriers in museums presented to people with sight impairment, which the project sought to understand. It then aimed to utilise technology, incorporating the use of AM to help address some of those barriers, aiming to increase accessibility to historic artefacts. To help design a system that could be implemented in small and medium-sized museums elsewhere, several factors had to be considered to offer scale-up. This includes user-engagement, effectiveness of tactile parts, ease-of-operation (for curator, as a non-expert AM user) and cost. This system utilises 2D photographs and a low-cost FDM desktop machine to produce lithophanes, as 3D relief versions of images, such as paintings or water-colours. This provides the user with a kinaesthetic sensory engagement which hitherto has been difficult to achieve in museum environments. Furthermore, by integrating the lithophanes with backlighting and audio systems, one may develop a multi-sensory experience which appeals to those who are both fully and partially blind. This research reports on the development of the system used to obtain and print selected 2D artefacts including consideration given to geometry, depth, finish, contrast, print orientation and size. The use of AM in this research allows the resulting product to be low-cost, accessible to both users and non-technical staff and efficient. One such advantage of this is the speed in which lithophanes are generated, which if being produced manually by hand would take fa

Material Extrusion has been used extensively as an additive manufacturing technology for a variety of applications like visual models, functional prototypes, tooling components, patterns for castings, and final parts. The current research paper proposes a study on the material type influence on economic objectives in material extrusion fabrication of complex assemblies. Three economic objectives have been analysed, namely, estimated fabrication time, material usage and material cost, whilst two commercial additive manufacturing machines have been considered for the simulation. Cura and ZSuite slicing software were used for the generation of Gcode and project files. Five filaments were selected from the same manufacturer and all components of the selected assembly were included in the analysis. Throughout the study, the additive manufacturing parameters were kept constant, as well as the component layout on the build platform of the two machines. Study results were analysed in correspondence with the manufacturing requirements and the optimum fabrication scenario was selected. Further research includes the analysis of multiple material manufacturers, in order to evaluate the influence of chemical composition on economic outputs.

During the coronavirus disease-19 pandemic, the demand for specific medical equipment such as personal protective equipment has rapidly exceeded the available supply around the world. Specifically, simple medical equipment such as medical gloves, aprons, goggles, surgery masks, and medical face shields have become highly in demand in the health-care sector in the face of this rapidly developing pandemic. This difficult period strengthens the social solidarity to an extent parallel to the escalation of this pandemic. Education and government institutions, commercial and noncommercial organizations and individual homemakers have produced specific medical equipment by means of additive manufacturing (AM) technology, which is the fastest way to create a product, providing their support for urgent demands within the health-care services. Medical face shields have become a popular item to produce, and many design variations and prototypes have been forthcoming. Although AM technology can be used to produce several types of noncommercial equipment, this rapid manufacturing approach is limited by its longer production time as compared to conventional serial/mass production and the high demand. However, most of the individual designer/maker-based face shields are designed with little appreciation of clinical needs and nonergonomic. They also lack of professional product design and are not designed according to AM (Design for AM [DfAM]) principles. Consequently, the production time of up to 4 – 5 h for some products of these designs is needed. Therefore, a lighter, more ergonomic, single frame medical face shield without extra components to assemble would be useful, especially for individual designers/makers and noncommercial producers to increase productivity in a shorter timeframe. In this study, a medical face shield that is competitively lighter, relatively more ergonomic, easy to use, and can be assembled without extra components (such as elastic bands, softening materia

Additive manufacturing is a worldwide trend and has been successfully adopted in a wide variety of domains. With applications ranging from automotive, aerospace, military, consumer goods bioprinting and even wearable electronics, the need for trained workforce in additive manufacturing is in high demand. Academia all around the world is adapting to this new trend trying to develop new strategies in delivering suitable competences to their undergraduate, masters’ and PhD students. Such an initiative is the Erasmus+ project TecHUB 4.0 which brings together four complementary universities from Romania, United Kingdom and Poland. The main goal of the project is to bring together professors, industry specialists, researchers, managers, and entrepreneurs to deliver, using methods based on modern teaching technologies, especially on the use of web-based platforms and digital technologies – e-learning and interactive platforms, their knowledge to the young students wishing to become entrepreneurs in the additive manufacturing area. An Open Interactive Platform will be designed to be used equally by companies, by universities and by students, which will aggregate the demand and offer for internships developed in the scope of developing projects anchored in the day-to-day additive manufacturing business activity to solve concrete problems, but at the same time respecting all the economic constraints imposed on a business at beginning of its life.

A sintered part’s mechanical properties are often variable dependent on the temperature at which it was sintered. Prior research has investigated how predefined process conditions (such as scan speed and laser power) in the ‘Sinter’ software affect built parts, however, little work focuses on other process conditions that can directly affect the temperature distribution in the bed relative to these parts. These conditions are not always controllable in the ‘Sinter’ software. By replacing the scanner at the top of the Sinterstation 2000 with a thermal imaging camera, an insight into the temperature distribution on the part bed was obtained. A temperature variance of up to 7°C was found across the bed, as well as a large temperature drop and recovery period on powder layer recoat. This paper explores the possible causes of this variation in the processing of DuraForm™ Polyamide-12 powder by monitoring and assessing build operations, enabled by replacing the front viewing window with a retro-fitted thermal imaging camera. The part bed was observed and various process conditions analysed including powder recoat, part and feed heaters, and swing gate configuration. On powder recoat, the part bed exhibited a drop in temperature because the fresh layer of powder is at a lower temperature than the powder already present in the part bed. The part bed temperature drop lessens with raised feed bed temperatures however there are limitations. Thermal analysis of the part heater proved that the uneven part bed heat distribution was not linked to the temperature gradient of the part heater. Swing gates were found to minimise hot and cold spots but spend a substantial time oscillating on roller passing.

A comparison of the simulation codes MCNPX, FLUKA and GEANT4 is described for the characterisation of the high-energy neutron field at the Tri Universities Meson Facility (TRUIMF) in Vancouver, British Columbia. Particle transport simulation codes MCNPX (version 2.6.0), FLUKA (version 2011.2.17) and GEANT4 (version 9.6) have been used to model the facility This information is further compared to the neutron spectrum calculated to be due to neutron radiation of cosmic origin at typical aircraft altitudes. As a means to explain differences between the results obtained, 4 models are compared in the MCNPX environment (BERTINI, ISABEL, CEM03 and INCL4).

In order to understand the impact of layer-wise scanning direction in the Selective Laser Sintering process, test coupons were manufactured for mechanical testing from DuraForm™ Polyamide powder. The effects of laser energy density, varying between 0.003 and 0.024 J/mm2 were examined in test specimens rotated 90º through the Z axis. SLS machines do not always facilitate ‘cross-hatching’ of layers and therefore orientation has a major influence on part quality. When employed, the cross-hatching technique scans successive layers perpendicularly to the previous. Studying how parts perform with scan lines in a common direction, will assist in the understanding of how SLS parts behave in practice. Results showed that physical density, tensile strength and elongation rose with energy density up to 0.012 J/mm². This initial rise was due to a continued improvement in particle fusion with increasing energy density. Above 0.012 J/mm², these properties started to decline at different rates depending on their orientation (scan direction) on the part bed. Specimen’s oriented perpendicularly to the X axis exhibited a greater elongation at the expense of tensile strength, when compared to parallel specimens.