Metalized 3D Printed Materials

The diverse set of metal repair parts required within the Air Force, coupled with the high cost of inventory can make leads times for their manufacture long and costs high.One way to achieve the goal of 100% availability is to additively manufacture metal forming dies for low volume parts only when needed. Triton Systems, in collaboration with our partner will develop and demonstrate a procedure to apply metallic coatings onto additively manufactured polymeric metal forming dies to increase their strength, hardness, heat resistance, and durability.To accelerate the development in the proposed effort, we will leverage success from our relevant work for the Air Force in which we improved the adhesion of metal foil to an additively manufactured polymer by almost an order of magnitude.This will allow for improved adhesion of the coatings to increase the hardness and wear performance of the die.