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COLLABORATING TO MEET INDUSTRY CHALLENGES
Students who worked to create the college's metal 3D printer show o their prototype.
A standout senior design project at the College of ECST – the Metal 3D Printer – gave students a chance to draw on diverse skill sets, compromise and work as a team toward defined goals.
This year, Mohsen Eshraghi, assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, tasked a six-member student team made up of four mechanical engineering and two electrical engineering seniors with designing, building, assembling and testing a low-cost, open-source metal 3D printer.
Eshraghi's goal is to "establish an additive manufacturing laboratory [also known as 3D printing] at Cal State LA as a tool to foster research and education in Southern California.”
Eshraghi says current leading open-source 3D printers can mainly print in polymers and are restricted both by the limitations inherent in these materials and by the limitations of the process. Metal 3D printing is capable of fabricating high-strength parts suitable for a wide variety of applications for aerospace, biomedical, automobile and defense industries.
“However, the proprietary commercial metal 3D printers are extremely expensive,” he says. “The lack of cheap metal 3-D printers has restricted their deployment.”
A group of ECST seniors stepped in to solve this industry problem.
“This was the first time Cal State LA offered a senior design project of this magnitude,” says Miguel Navarro, a 2016 mechanical engineering graduate and team leader for the Metal 3D Printer project. “We all approached problems differently. Some of us were more methodical. Others were more hands-on.”
Students conducted extensive research, debugging and testing. They had to learn the fundamentals of 3D printing, materials science, welding, microcontroller programming and CAD modeling, along with other topics.
“More importantly, they had to be innovative as this was a unique and novel project,” says Eshraghi, the faculty adviser. “Currently, the metal 3D printer is built and
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functional but still needs overall improvements and calibration.”
“The 3D printing industry is still in its infancy, so it’s the perfect time
to develop a better-quality, lower- cost piece of equipment,” adds Arpi Baghoomian, also a 2016 mechanical engineering graduate. “Some team members excelled at the research and modeling stages, while others contributed by building and testing
the physical prototype.”
The team included Navarro, Baghoomian, Jessica Guzman and Amer Matar – mechanical engineering seniors – and Hector Pineda and Joel Castro – electrical engineering seniors.
“We created our structure from nothing,” says Guzman. “While some students might buy a kit for a plastic
3D printer and convert it into a metal printer, we did not. We bought raw materials and printed many parts using our school’s plastic printers, as about 70 percent of the components that make up the printer structure are plastic.”
Guzman says the team worked through the 2015-16 winter break to assemble the printer. The students also wrote their own code to control movement of the printer and their Tungsten Inert Gas (TIG) welder.
TIG is very versatile and produces the highest quality welds. TIG welding uses an electric arc to make the weld and welding wire that is slowly fed into the weld puddle. It enables the production of very fine and delicate weld beads, which are crucial for 3D printing metals. The method is capable of processing many different types of metals.
Each team member took the lead in a key area, such as technical research, team organization, programming, assembly or automation to create Cal State LA’s first 3D metal printer.
“We all think differently, and that’s what made us so successful,” says Guzman.