Additive Manufactured Smart Structures with Discrete Embedded Sensors

Layer-by-layer additive manufacturing (AM) has been flourishing. The next generation AM will be hybrid which includes 3D AM printer, CNC mill, micro-milling capability, CAD/CAM, pick-and-place tool and many interchangeable print engines. In other words, this next generation of printers will be a completely computer integrated system. For the last four years, we have been integrating an industry standard 5-axis CNC mill as a hybrid AM tooltrue 3D printed electronics printer, pick-and-place tool, basic 3D polymer and metallic additive printer, 3D laser scanner and CAD/CAM software. Its our goal to do much of the AM on a single manufacturing platform (CNC) with single operating system (CAD/CAM). The development of direct digital manufacturing process is equally important as the integration of hardware and software. For the last three years, we focused our attention to the manufacturing process development: 3D printed electronics (both syringe nozzle and Aerosol Jet), simple geometry structure printing with polymer and metal, pick-and-place system, basic 3DAM, nano-particle ink laser sintering and laser machining. Additional research is necessary to transfer our current step-wise methods into a coupon manufacturing processes. Our work was selected by a DoD agency as one of top three transferable technology in 2015.