Realizing the Circular Economy in Tool Making with Hybrid Manufacturing

DANIEL NOVEIELLO: Hello, and welcome to Autodesk University 2021. My name is Dan Noviello, and I'm joined here by my colleagues, Paul, Kyle, and Desmond to present to you our industry talk, Realizing the Circular Economy in Tool Making with Hybrid Manufacturing.

With that, I'll pass it over to Desmond to start our introductions.

DESMOND HO: Hi, everyone. I'm Desmond, I'm a project manager with the Industry Futures Strategy Engagement team based in Singapore. So specializing in aerospace design and manufacturing, I work on the implementation of advanced engineering design to manufacturing workflow and factory automation system in this region. Leveraging on the experience I have in aerospace industry, translate them, the know how into other industries, including the automotive construction and the marine sector, developing innovative manufacturing workflow, such as adaptive, additive, and hybrid manufacturing with advanced engineering material.

PAUL BRINCAT: Hi I'm Paul Brincat. I'm a Senior Research Manager at Autodesk Australia, located in Melbourne. I joined Autodesk through the Moldflow acquisition, so I have a long career in the fields of injection molding, simulation, and material testing. I'm now responsible for the Autodesk materials lab. We provide all the testing services for Autodesk injection molding simulation products, as well as contributing to various material research and collaboration projects, such as this. And I'll just hand it over to Kyle.

KYLE SALEEBY: Hello, everyone. My name is Kyle Saleeby and I'm a research staff member with the Manufacturing Automation and Controls Group at Oak Ridge National Lab. My main focus is working with the manufacturing demonstration facility on connected processes with manufacturing machines and industry 4.0 technologies. My current focus centers on applications of data science, and particularly closed loop control of hybrid manufacturing processes. Dan, I'll turn it back over to you.

DANIEL NOVEIELLO: Thanks, Kyle. And finally, as I mentioned, I'm Dan Noviello, I'm a manager in the Industry Futures Group, which is part of Autodesk research. Like Paul, I'm also based in Melbourne, Australia. And I've got a background in aerospace and space engineering with a focus on structural design and simulation. At Autodesk I lead a team that collaborates with our industrial and academic partners to deliver research and innovations across all of our industry verticals, which are AEC, architecture engineering construction, manufacturing, and media and entertainment.

OK so moving on, before we get into this, I'd just like to make a few acknowledgments. I'd like to acknowledge the many people who have contributed to the work that we're presenting to you today. We've been working with the team at the manufacturing demonstration facility at Oak Ridge National Labs for about two years now. And in that time, we've developed a great partnership in which we've researched and co-developed a range of digital manufacturing technologies. And these are in various areas, like CNC cutting forces and dynamics, circular and sustainable manufacturing, and of course, large scale additive and hybrid manufacturing.

I want to stress that this presentation here is but a small part of the research that we've been doing into hybrid manufacturing and its applications, so please feel free to explore this topic further with us at the end in the Q&A, we really look forward to having that discussion with you.

OK, so I'm just going to run through the contents of today's talk. First of all, we're going to get started with some goals of the project itself and re-introduce you to the learning objectives. We'll then dive into the industry context to give you a bit of a background as to why this is relevant in the injection molding industry and just a quick refresher about hybrid manufacturing. We'll then go on and introduce our demonstration component which we've used for the project. We'll talk about some of the facilities that we've had at our disposal and the hardware and software used to carry out the project.

And then, we'll dive into the process of actually modifying the tool with hybrid manufacturing, and we'll go through the entire workflow of that with you. Well then have a look at the results and discuss the conclusions towards the end of the presentation.

OK, so to dive into the goals and the learning objectives. Now the goal of this specific project, for us, was to digitize and streamline the process of modifying injection mold tools with hybrid manufacturing technologies. Within this goal, we wanted to be able to demonstrate the circular economy principles with tool reuse in the injection molding industry, as opposed to building brand new tools and re-machining from block.

And we also wanted to demonstrate the concept of flexible manufacturing, which is something that you might see in high mix and low volume factories, by using the same tool to produce successive versions of a product. So we're taking that digital paradigm and moving it into the physical space.

Now for your learning objectives in this, we'd love you to go away having learned how to use hybrid manufacturing to extend the life of and modify injection molding tools, give you an idea about how to create additive and subtractive toolpaths. And also, help you learn how to assess the manufacturing feasibility of injection molded designs with Fusion 360 Simulation, so we'll provide an introduction there. Finally, we want to make sure that you learn a bit about the benefits and limitations of hybrid manufacturing.

With that, I'll pass it over to Desmond to talk a little bit about the industry context of our project.

DESMOND HO: Thank you, Dan. The common repair process in the motor industry includes milling away of damaged area and insert a pre-finished feature into the cavity, or simply by welding the cracks and machine it back to its normal geometry. This is usually limited to large and expensive models, for the simple reason of scale of economy, and smaller tools and inserts are usually just replaced.

Our goal is to digitize, automate, and streamline the modification process with relatively simple hybrid manufacturing workflows. We see this as an example of circular manufacturing, as it encourages the reuse of tools and inserts, regardless of size, and provides significant reduction in lead time. This is also very useful for a manufacturer who requires modification to model for successive versions of products or new material trials.

So talk a bit about hybrid manufacturing. So what is hybrid manufacturing? It is a combination of two processes in one platform. You are able to add and subtract material in an integrated machine tool. So having both manufacturing methods in one machine can be extremely useful and productive with far less machine setups required. This gives you the ability to build things to a unit shape and then machine them afterwards to a finished quality.

So now, I will talk a bit about the demonstration component. To conduct the demonstration, we thought about how we could best illustrate circular manufacturing with model damage repair or modification. Eventually, we derive on a handheld diameter measuring tool, which we can give out as a souvenir during events. These components are usually event specific, which means it will need regular updates to design on selective area of the mold insert.

So instead of making a whole new insert, the lead time can be significantly reduced by modifying the current insert with hybrid manufacturing. And since we all love giving presentations and souvenirs at conferences, this part can be branded differently for many conferences to come.

So with this, I'll now pass on to Kyle to talk about Oak Ridge National Labs manufacturing demonstration facility.

KYLE SALEEBY: Thank you, Desmond. So the manufacturing demonstration facility is a user facility located in Oak Ridge National Lab. Our facility has three programmatic focuses. One, to develop cutting edge manufacturing technology. Two, to work with our partners and immediately deploy these technologies to the shop floor. And three, to contribute to the next generation workforce who can leverage these advanced manufacturing technologies for a diverse range of national challenges.

We are currently partnered with Autodesk for some of this development, particularly with hybrid manufacturing, simulation, and circular economy. And honestly, we tremendously enjoy this collaboration. Together, with our two teams combined, we get to form a community of people working for a better manufacturing industry. I'd encourage you to reach out to us if you'd like to work together in the future.

Paul, I'll pass it over to you to talk about the Autodesk Materials Lab.

PAUL BRINCAT: Thanks, Kyle. For this project, the Autodesk Materials Lab acted as a typical molding shop, where we used our machining and molding equipment to firstly, produce the insert and then conduct the molding trials. The main function of the lab is to offer polymer testing to generate material data files for injection molding products that Autodesk has such, as Moldflow. And now, with the recent update, Fusion injection molding.

With over 30 years of polymer testing history, we've developed test methods that provide accurate representations of the materials, specifically for injection mold and simulation. So while we do have scientific equipment for measuring specific material properties, we have injection molding machines to measure material behavior as they're used in the industry. The result of which is help to create a database of over 11,000 materials, which is available in Moldflow and Fusion injection modeling.

As with this project, we were also involved in various research and collaboration projects with third parties.

With respect to hardware available, the original insert and molding, we had to work with the equipment at the lab. With much of our models being relatively simple geometry, such as flat blocks and extrusion dyes, we have a three axis Tormach machine available, which was used for the new insert. Also, given the time available, we elected to use existing configurable mold bases. This allowed us to choose from various gating designs and swap out the essential insert for this new insert, saving us time to generate the entire mold.

But when working with the existing mold, that meant accommodating through existing cooling lines and ejection systems, which you see on the right. Where we needed to make sure where the ejectors would land on the part. So the inset rework at Oak Ridge, the Okuma MU8000V was used, which Kyle will be showing later on in the presentation.

Obviously, on the Autodesk side, we wanted to utilize the benefits of Fusion 360 environment, particularly with the timeframe of this project, we didn't want to waste time transferring files and models between different environments. Also, having errors creep into just by having out-of-date models.

So by simply creating a common Fusion project, we had a product designer, tooling designer, injection molding simulation, and all this all working in the same environment. So straight away, impacts the design decisions, we reviewed the tooling and injection molding processing issues. So it just enabled collaboration, rather than sequential design, tool, simulation. We just have injection molding machines can sometimes become too light to address.

So shown here, all the members of the team can see the latest part design. Then by switching to the manufacturing environment, the tooling part design and simulation could be developed. Then again, by switching over to the simulation environment, the new plastic injection molding option is available for preview to assess prices and issues. And now, I'll hand it over to Desmond.

DESMOND HO: Thank you, Paul. Now I give an overview of the workflow. So on the image itself, you can see the overview of Fusion 360 hybrid workflow for the component. We started off with the component design, look for suitable more tool for reuse, and ran a simulation with material shrinkage properties, characterized by the Autodesk material apps, to check on the mold flow. From the simulation results, we would check if we need to refine the design or not.

Once we are happy with the design, we generate milling tool path on the insert block and manufacture it. We proceed to run a small batch to look out for areas of concern and refine the original mold insert. We then update the component design to suit the next even and start with milling off at areas to be modified. We proceed to add material on the area we just machined and complete the insert modification by milling it to the updated CAD model.

So with this, I'll pass to Paul to give a more in-depth presentation on the design simulation and make aspect.

PAUL BRINCAT: Thanks, Desmond. Firstly to enable the Fusion injection molding building preview, you will need to make sure that the preview has been selected in the Fusion preferences, which you see on the right. The simulation uses the same 3D solvers available within the Moldflow inside products, though the process has been simplified with all the machining done internally and automatically.

Once you enter the preview, the browser will, essentially, show you guide on key requirements. Firstly, being the material database, so you'll need to select the material through the over 11,000 materials available on the database. And these are using their actually measured properties, so it just enhances the simulation results.

Then, you'll need to select the processing details, if they're known, so things like injection speeds. And then it's simply a matter of clicking solve and waiting for the results to become available.

Here, we see some of the filling results obtained with Fusion. On the left, you'll see this animation of the filling of the part as the polymer enters the mold.

Here, we've conducted some short shots during the mold trial, where we prematurely stopped the injection process so it can do a comparison with the simulation results are predicted and where the actual part melt followed to. And here's the end of filling. Also, what's not shown here is that it also predicts the shrinkage of the part, which is roughly, for this part, about 0.7%. And this was allowed for in part design.

Build tool and manufactured injection molding component. For the machining of the mold, we took advantage of Fusion 360's CAD features, such as inductive and pocket for the basic shapes, steep and shallow for more complex 3D geometries, trace for sharp lines and engraving text and numbers.

And here's the insert in our Tormach machine. And here is the newly manufactured part insert. This is just the one side. There's obviously a moving side, as well, which reflects this and has a deeper recess.

The thing to focus here is on the AU 2021 text in the middle, which will be reworked during the hybrid manufacturing process.

And here's how the Insert performed in our molding trial. And see the part being ejected.

Like to say everything went perfectly as designed, but like many mold trials, you always discover new problems. While we were able to mold several different materials, there was always areas for improvement. With this part, because of the gate design and the relatively long tab but often broke off in the moving half, and that blocked the subsequent shot, so there was ejection issues for the next shot.

Also, you can see here on the top right, the part often stuck into the fixed half, which is not as by design, but needs to fix into the moving half so it can be injected successfully. So obviously, there were some areas for improvement. And this is one area that, perhaps, the hybrid machining method could be used to address these types of molding issues. Instead of throwing out the Insert, it could be reworked and addressed. And now, I'll hand over to Desmond.

DESMOND HO: Thank you, Paul. Now I will talk a bit about the implementation of the design update. So in just days before finishing off our hybrid modify inserts to be ready for the next event, IMTS 2022, we were informed of the Autodesk logo change, which means our original Autodesk logo will not be relevant for any coming events. So we then thought to ourselves, isn't this the best way to show the benefits of having manufacturing for model modification and repair? So an immediate update on the CAD model with Fusion 360, followed by additive and subtractive to path regeneration, prepared us for a really, really quick turnaround time for physical modification of the insert.

So with this, I'll pass on to Kyle how we make this possible with the heavy process he undertook, Kyle?

KYLE SALEEBY: Yeah, thank you, Desmond. And I totally agree, right when you guys came to us with not only the text redesign for IMTS 2022 but also the new Autodesk logo, it's a perfect opportunity to show the benefits of hybrid.

So there were three main steps that we took to refresh this mold. First, we had to program the tool paths to prepare the existing geometry of the used mold inserts. This helps just to prepare the surfaces, make sure that everything is in a known location and where we think it is prior to the hybrid operations. The mold preparation process involved aligning the new mold in our Okuma MU8000 Laser EX hybrid machine. We made the part, revised the whole new system to align some of the existing features with a common work origin. And I'll talk a little bit later about some of the things that the Okuma particularly has that assisted with that.

Next, we needed to program the tool paths, so we programmed a quick facing pass to remove the AU 2021 engraved text and that's where the new text will be placed. So just facing off the surface, giving it a nice, known location from where to start. It's a very simple tool path to start with that blank surface.

Finally, we programmed a tool path to machine a small pocket that you see on the right hand side of your screen. This is where that new material will be deposited. The pocket was designed to be as small as possible to require the most efficient amount of material for the additive change. It also provided a controlled location to help contain some of the blown powder material. This same process was duplicated for the new Autodesk logo that you see on the bottom of the mold.

So on the next slide, one of the benefits of Fusion 360, clearly, is the ability to change rapidly between workspaces and manufacturing operations. This capability became extremely powerful when we needed to switch back between subtractive machining, additive DED, and even the redesign changes to make these tool parts. After programming and completing the preparation steps, we heavily leveraged that ability to switch to program a DED feature construction strategy to rebuild both the logo text and the new Autodesk logo. You can see on the right hand side of your screen a simulation with that final tool path for filling in the old Autodesk logo and preparing it for final machining.

On the next slide, we'll talk a little bit about how we erased and rebuilt that updated feature. So this video shows exactly what happened during some of the additive fill operations. As you can see, delving a little bit deeper into the additive process, we used the tool path on our DED machine, the Okuma MU8000 Laser EX. After that was done, we then re-machined it, just with our program tool paths, as we programmed before. And I believe on this timelapse, you can see us coming in to inspect the mold, making sure the surfaces appeared as we saw.

Continuing on with the re-machining operations, working down the surfaces to those known heights. And finally, finishing up the mold with a couple of finishing passes to regenerate those final surface features for the fixed mold insert. We then duplicated this on the moving mold insert, as well.

So there's a couple of considerations that I'd like everyone to keep in mind when we work with hybrid manufacturing technologies. First, we were careful to ensure proper material dilution and adhesion of the new material to the mold surface. You can see right there on the left hand side of your screen, the pocket that was filled in, as well as the Autodesk logo the, old logo that was filled in. We had to carefully tune our additive process parameters to make sure that, basically, the materials stuck to the underlying substrate. We also set strategic tool path limits. And at times, even physically masked other features on the mold to prevent damage from weld spatter or slag. You saw in the video, one of our technicians looking at the mold to make sure that surface was still good after the DED process.

We also leveraged a series of process monitoring techniques to capture, record, and analyze the mold repair process. As I mentioned before, when we were aligning it, one of the key technologies we used was the Okuma hybrid machine's coaxial weld pool monitoring camera. This allows a operator to directly view the weld pool in real time and gain an understanding of the material dilution and adhesion quality, basically checking that we made a good weld in repairing this process.

So finally, on the next slide, throughout this process, we learned a great deal about repairing the existing mold by leveraging the Fusion 360 environment. There were a couple of tool path considerations, in terms of giving extra feed height than the roughing operations to bring that preform down to size. We heavily relied on that design workspace to make sketches, boundaries, and other geometric features that helped us guide and control the subtractive tool paths. This can also now be done with the new manufacturing model process, as well.

And finally, we leveraged a few of the advanced tool path modifications, as well, to trim and edit the tool paths that were generated. This allows us to generate a tool path using, for example, the adaptive strategy to further roughing operations, but then go in and rework it and limit it to one specific area on the tool. It was very useful to leverage all these in the integrated Fusion 360 environment.

On the next slide, Desmond, the final inserts are shown. You can see the revamped Autodesk logo, the IMTS 2022, and also the text that was added in there on the bottom mold. Overall, the reworked project was a big success and required multiple components, parts, tool paths, and setups to be coordinated throughout both the Autodesk shop and as well as the manufacturing demonstration facility.

So all that's left is the last stage in the process, of course, using the newly repaired mold in Paul's materials shop. You can see the new inserts performing at the Autodesk injection molding machine. Just as the mold breaks open, the ejection pins fire and our part is successfully pushed out of the mold inserts.

So with that, Desmond, I'll turn it back over to you.

DESMOND HO: Thank you, Kyle. So here is the images for before and after of the part produced with our hybrid mold to insert modification. On the left is the original mold to insert, and on the right it's the one after the hybrid manufacturing mold to insert modification update. So you can see on the bottom area, we have the logo changed and also the events changed from AU 2021 to IMTS 2022.

So unifying our workflow within a single Fusion 360 project allows very rapid change and update to the design and to path, like what Paul and Kyle shared. So initial molding issue was resolved swiftly with problem identification and refinement of the insert with additional milling tool path. Also the 11th hour logo change was very quickly resolved with each team updating respective design, milling, and additive tool paths concurrently. So what makes Fusion 360 very valuable to us is the ability to collaborate very remotely. So the team consists of members from four different countries, four different time zones, and physical work spread between two different labs.

Coming to the conclusion, the unified hybrid manufacturing workflow in Fusion 360 create opportunity for more maker and manufacturer to reuse their mold tool. And at the same time, enjoy a shorter [INAUDIBLE] time, reducing waste, and eventually reducing their cost. It also provides a very good platform for research into new engineering material characterization, which often requires successive changes in model design, to achieve the desired results.

So although we know the potential and benefits hybrid manufacturing can bring to the industry, there are also barriers to the technology adoption. Firstly, it's the cost of the hybrid manufacturing machine tool now, which may not be economically viable for smaller companies to purchase. Another barrier will be the size, weight, or the surface area of the model to be repaired or modified. So they are usually restricted by the load and envelope the hybrid machine tool can handle. So if it's too large, if it's larger than the hybrid machine tool envelope, it will not be able to work on it.

So thus, we are exploring the possibility to bring down the entry barrier, transferring this know-how onto less costly hybrid machine hardware set up with a single, easy to use software application like Fusion 360, which we have already approved the single workflow to cover the whole process. We are also scaling up the process to cater to bigger and more complex to repair or modification. And also for manufacturer that has a very high mix and low-volume injection molding components to produce.

So with this, we have come to the end of our presentation. And on behalf of the team, I would like to thank everyone for attending our presentation and we look forward to answering your questions in the Q&A section next. Thank you. Thank you.