February 2024 Volume 6

INDUSTRY NEWS

HAMMER - A National Science Foundation Engineering Center Will Bring New Technology to Forging Authors: Glenn Daehn, HAMMER-ERC Director, Steve Niezgoda, FIERF Professor and ERC Co-Director, The Ohio State University, Christian Fischer, Tkach Consulting

ARM sponsored demonstration of tie-rod like geometries being formed by automated controlled open die forging in a project led by M. Groeber and S. Niezgoda. Integrated induction furnace, hydraulic press and robot are being used. Between the robot and workpiece is a ‘compliance device’ that limits the load that may be transmitted to the robot.

technologies that can be used to do this, and this is what we broadly call hybrid autonomous manufacturing. Hybrid Autonomous Manufacturing will optimize production, particularly for small run products, by efficiently selecting and combining deformation processing with additive and subtractive shaping technology. Equally importantly, it will provide work opportunities for many undergraduate and graduate students at each of the five partner universities. Hybrid manufacturing is a natural progression from digital manufacturing, extending digital manufacturing to the realm of forging and forming. As the concept develops, it will merge the inherently superior mechanical properties of forging with the shape

The Ohio State University and its partners were recently awarded a National Science Foundation (NSF) research grant to lead the next generation of manufacturing technology while developing a skilled, educated workforce that will lead the U.S. forging industry, and other related industries, into the middle of the 21st century and beyond. The NSF Hybrid Autonomous Manufacturing, Moving from Evolution to Revolution (HAMMER) Engineering Research Center is a partnership among The Ohio State University, Case Western Reserve University, North Carolina A&T State University, Northwestern University, and University of Tennessee - Knoxville. The Big Idea We imagine sets of tools that can interoperate in an autonomous way to conduct these hybrid manufacturing sequences. Additive manufacturing has shown us that there is a real need in the market for high quality components produced digitally on demand. At HAMMER, however, we believe that there is a much wider set of

flexibility of digitally controlled manufacturing. HAMMER-ERC Research Thrusts

HAMMER will utilize Autonomous Design, Tool and Process Convergence, Material State Awareness, and Control, Intelligence, and Autonomy to produce a wide variety of products.

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