All photo credit: Thermwood Corp.
Purdue University’s Composites Manufacturing Simulation Center (CMSC, West Lafayette, Ind., U.S.) and Thermwood Corp. (Dale, Ind., U.S.) have agreed to establish a large-scale additive manufacturing (LSAM) laboratory to perform industry-funded research into large-scale composite thermoplastic additive manufacturing (AM).
The new facility will be established at Purdue’s Indiana Manufacturing Institute, located in the Purdue Research Park in West Lafayette, Ind., and will be staffed and operated by Purdue CMSC personnel. The official name for the new facility is the “Thermwood LSAM Research Laboratory at Purdue University.”
The new laboratory will be equipped with an LSAM 105 (ten-five) Large-Scale Additive Printer and a corresponding five-axis LSAM Additive Trimmer, as well as a variety of support systems. Thermwood says this installation is capable of printing and trimming complex geometries up to 5 x 10 x 4 feet tall at print rates of up to 100 pounds per hour. Commercial maximum print temperature for LSAM printers is usually limited to 450ºC, however, this particular system has been modified to enable testing at even higher temperatures for experimentation with innovations in materials normally not used in AM.