Hyphen Innovations will look to develop and commercialise a software package that would provide users better access to its inherent damping via additive manufacturing processes (i-DAMP) technology.
The company’s i-DAMP technology uses data from finite element analysis to strategically place voids in printed parts to help suppress the overall vibration of the part, system or product, helping to vibration stresses by up to 95%. Voids are placed in areas of the part that avoid high stresses, with the unfused powder within them performing the same role as a pendulum in buildings that are located in regions susceptible to earthquakes.
i-DAMP technology has been developed at the US Air Force Research Lab to address challenges found in aerospace and defence applications, though Hyphen Innovations also sees opportunities in industries like automotive, tooling and household applications. But as it looks to expand into these additional markets, there is recognition from CEO Onome Scott-Emuakpor that the company will need to alter how it currently serves its clients.
“Right now, if an aerospace company is interested in this, they have to reach out to us and then we’re involved in the development process,” Scott-Emuakpor said on this week’s episode of the Additive Insight podcast. “We have to manually tell them where to put their unfused powder voids and how to redesign and so forth. It can be a bit cumbersome and not quite done in a timely fashion. So, ultimately, we want to not necessarily be in the equation, and we want to give people the tools that gets them from initial design to final design.”
Recently, Hyphen Innovations completed a US Air Force project that demonstrated if they additively manufactured a direct replacement part, with no changes to the exterior geometry, using i-DAMP, the weight different was less than 1% but the durability of the component saw a 10X improvement – 1 million cycles vs 10 million cycles.
Scott-Emuakpor is confident that this kind of impact can be further enhanced with design changes, citing part consolidation as a particular opportunity since consolidated components can be highly susceptible to vibrations. In assembled parts, the interfaces can help to dissipate energy, so without them, you increase the likelihood of fatigue failure where the part is experiencing dynamic loading.
While Hyphen Innovations believes it has the solution, it recognises there is still work to do to allow as many users as possible to benefit from i-DAMP technology.
“What a company like nTop did was create an intermediate step where you’ve come up with your initial design, [so you] implement your initial design into their software and then from their software comes out your new design,” Scott-Emuakpor said. “It’s not quite the extra cumbersome optimisation process that one has to go through with different software, and potentially by hand depending on what kind of person you are. So, that’s the same thing we’re trying to do. We’re trying to create this intermediate process where you create your initial design, say ‘I want to increase damping and I want to be able to optimise this for weight as well, and this software [will do] that for people in an automated fashion. Now, we are able to leverage the full strength and capability of i-DAMP. It would be as simple as a software subscription and that’s it.”
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Exhibit at the UK's definitive and most influential 3D printing and additive manufacturing event, TCT 3Sixty.
Onome Scott-Emuakpor will present at TCT 3Sixty on Wednesday, June 5th, 2024. Register for free at TCT3sixty.com
