Advanced Pathing for Additive Manufacturing
June's presenter was Dr. Michael Borish, a research staff member at ORNL’s Manufacturing Demonstration Facility (MDF). At the MDF, he engages in a wide range of disciplines within Computer Science as they relate to industrial additive manufacturing. His presentation was be on Industry 4.0, the fourth revolution in manufacturing. This revolution is primarily concerned with the rise in smart manufacturing represented by the continued digitization of manufacturing coupled with emerging technologies like sensor feedback, data analytics, and machine learning. One specific technology described in Industry 4.0 is additive manufacturing, more commonly called 3D printing. At the Manufacturing Demonstration Facility (MDF), development of this technology for industrial applications is a primary focus. While there have been great leaps in hardware, software has lagged. No where is this more true than with slicing packages that develop the pathing solutions necessary for object construction. While this issue is changing, much work remains. To address this issue at the MDF, development of a slicing software package to support the unique research conducted there is ongoing. In this seminar, we looked at work done at the MDF with regard to path planning development with a focus on large-format polymer systems. This work covers a broad range of topics including the obvious path planning, but also graph theory, computer vision, real-time control, and augmented reality to name a few. We also touched on applications to other materials and types of systems.