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- All Subjects: Additive Manufacturing
- Creators: Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Program
- Creators: Hildreth, Owen
This work introduces dissolvable supports to single- and multi-material metals AM. The multi-material approach uses material choice to design a functionally graded material where corrosion is the functionality being varied. The single-material approach is the primary focus of this thesis, leveraging already common post-print heat treatments to locally alter the microstructure near the surface. By including a sensitizing agent in the ageing heat treatment, carbon is diffused into the part decreasing the corrosion resistance to a depth equal to at least half the support thickness. In a properly chosen electrolyte, this layer is easily chemically, or electrochemically removed. Stainless steel 316 (SS316) and Inconel 718 are both investigated to study this process using two popular alloys. The microstructure evolution and corrosion properties are investigated for both. For SS316, the effect of applied electrochemical potential is investigated to describe the varying corrosion phenomena induced, and the effect of potential choice on resultant roughness. In summary, a new approach to remove supports from metal AM parts is introduced to decrease costs and further the field of metals AM by expanding the design space.
The purpose of this project is to assess how well today’s youth is able to learn new skills<br/>in the realm of engineering through online video-conferencing resources. Each semester of this<br/>last year, a class of students in both 3rd and 6th grade learned about computer-aided design (CAD)<br/>and 3D printing through their laptops at school. This was done by conducting online lessons of<br/>TinkerCAD via Zoom and Google Meet. TinkerCAD is a simple website that incorporates easy-to-learn skills and gives students an introduction to some of the basic operations that are used in<br/>everyday CAD endeavors. In each lesson, the students would learn new skills by creating<br/>increasingly difficult objects that would test both their ability to learn new skills and their overall<br/>enjoyment with the subject matter. The findings of this project reflect that students are able to<br/>quickly learn and retain new information relating to CAD. The group of 6th graders was able to<br/>learn much faster, which was expected, but the class of 3rd graders still maintained the<br/>knowledge gained from previous lessons and were able to construct increasingly complicated<br/>objects without much struggle. Overall, the students in both classes enjoyed the lessons and did<br/>not find them too difficult, despite the online environment that we were required to use. Some<br/>students found the material more interesting than others, but in general, the students found it<br/>enjoyable to learn about a new skill that has significant real-world applications