A PhD student in Mechanical Engineering at The University of Western Australia is helping design a safer and more cost-effective future using a state-of-the-art 3D metal printer.
Addam Edwards was involved in a project at TechWorks, which is a part of the Woodside FutureLab at UWA, when he was completing his Master of Professional Engineering.
"The lab had acquired a hi-tech laser powder bed fusion printer through its collaboration with Woodside," Mr Edwards said.
"It came with software that was meant to be able to detect defects, but it was very closed off and no one really had much of an idea about how it worked or how to use it."
It became Mr Edwards' job to figure out how the defect detection monitoring software feature of the printer worked and present his findings to stakeholders at Woodside Energy.
"I was already working in industry at the time, and I had plans to work in the industrial area in Kwinana and then during a meeting Woodside asked me to stay on and do a PhD — something I'd never even considered," he said.
The Esperance-raised student decided to stay in academia and remain within the 3D Additive Manufacturing program, a project he had already worked on and loved for the past year.
The up-and-coming manufacturing process creates complex metallic shapes that can be used in industries such as biomedicine, by creating implants, or for aerospace by producing lightweight components for aeroplanes and rockets.
"It is extremely relevant for industries that require a fast turnaround for complex components," Mr Edwards said.
"In the not-so-far future, this type of technology will be one of the primary manufacturing methods used for colonising the moon.
"Its additive nature means that for small parts, it is much more material-efficient than other manufacturing technologies, which means less material is required to produce components of the same quality and functionality.
"This allows industries such as aerospace to achieve designs that are of an enhanced weight efficiency."
Although the 3D printing process has been around for a few decades, manufacturers have not been able to reliably eliminate the chance of random defects occurring.
"Manufactured engineering parts have to undergo testing to verify whether they're good enough to be used in production," he said.
"It needs to be established whether such parts can withstand the stresses that they are subjected to over prolonged periods of time.
"If something was to fail unexpectedly, the consequences could be catastrophic."
Current testing methods such as CT scans and ultrasound that are used to detect cracks and other defect types can be very time consuming, are often limited in resolution and can be costly too.
"There are sensors in the machine such as an infrared camera, which observe and record the thermal history of the whole build process," Mr Edwards said.
"The data taken from those sensors can be used to figure out whether something may have gone wrong during the print or whether the part should be defect-free.
"It might sound easy, but the defects can be very small and it's a very complex process — it can be very hard to figure out how the data patterns acquired from the sensors correlate with the actual end product."
Professor Tim Sercombe, Head of the School Engineering at UWA, Associate Professor Du Huynh, from the School of Computer Science, and Dr Bobby Gillham and Dr Jincheng Wang, from the TechWorks project team, are helping Mr Edwards progress.
Mike Brameld, Chief Technology Materials Engineer, and Dr Lee Djumas, Additive Manufacturing Lead, at Woodside Energy also provide guidance and help keep the project relevant to industry.
The project has evolved to have a more machine learning approach where raw data is used to develop algorithms to try and classify if a part has defects or not.
It's a slow process with 1 cm test samples taking a few hours to print and an implant such as those used in biomedicine taking 24 to 36 hours.
But once Mr Edwards has "cracked the code" for defect detection, time and money will be saved and more importantly, people will be safer.
"The PhD experience has been thoroughly enjoyable as I get to work on my own project while also continually developing my knowledge," Mr Edwards said.
"It is exciting to think that through this work I am helping to expand the boundary of our collective human capability."
