ADAPT Additive Manufacturing Consortium Hosts Open House

    DENVER, CO, June 22, 2016 /24-7PressRelease/ -- ADAPT, the Alliance for the Development of Additive Processing Technologies, a research consortium focused on developing technologies to accelerate the certification and qualification of 3D printed metal parts - technologies at the forefront of today's advanced manufacturing industries - will host a public open house on Thursday, June 23, 2016. The event, from 5:00 to 8:00 p.m., will be held at the ADAPT Advanced Characterization Center on the Colorado School of Mines campus, Brown Hall W230, 1610 Illinois St., Golden, Colorado. Parking in any "blue" campus lot is free after 4:30 pm (lots at 18th & Illinois and on Elm between 15th & 17th are close). RSVP via this link is requested.

"We are excited to showcase the new ADAPT Center to Colorado business, academia, and the general public," says ADAPT Executive Director Tom Bugnitz. "With this center we have the foundation for making Colorado the center of the world for metal additive manufacturing expertise, and Colorado manufacturers have first access to groundbreaking research. We've assembled leading-edge tools to help Colorado manufacturers and academic researchers learn and understand more about metal additive manufacturing than their counterparts anywhere else in the world. We hope prospective ADAPT members will see the value of what we've created and join us in making Colorado the world leader in metal additive technologies."

Tours of the ADAPT lab will include demonstrations of a new Zeiss Xradia 520 Versa 3D X-ray microscope, the Keyence VHX-5000 optical measurement system, servo-hydraulic mechanical test equipment from MTS Systems Corporation, other metallurgical prep equipment, and the ADAPT-Citrination database.

ADAPT Technical Director Aaron Stebner notes, "The key element tying this equipment and research together is using data and artificial intelligence to learn from our analyses. Beyond giving our partners results, with this database we're creating new ways to design and build parts using data-driven models to position our partners as world leaders in advanced manufacturing."

There will be informal discussions on the team's work during its first six months of research and development efforts, including work on alloys for additive manufacturing and real-time monitoring of the metal additive process. Drinks and heavy appetizers will be served.

For those attending the National Space & Missile Materials Symposium in Westminster, Colorado June 20-23, the Center is a short trip from the Westin Westminster host venue.

As ADAPT continues its work, the consortium is actively seeking academic and industry partners to support and contribute to its work focused on investigating important additive manufacturing areas, including work on advanced structure-property characterizations of metals, including sub-micron-resolved computed tomography (CT) and diffraction contrast tomography, thermomechanical testing, 3D surface metrology, and state-of-the-art optical microscopy and sample preparation. Analysis is underway on more than 5,000 specimens with respect to build geometry, power, speed, and number of lasers used, and more, to build a robust database.

Brown Hall is the current home of the ADAPT Characterization Center, but once the under-construction CoorsTek Center for Applied Science and Engineering is complete, ADAPT will relocate there.

About ADAPT
The Alliance for the Development of Additive Processing Technologies (ADAPT) is a research and development organization dedicated to the creation of next-generation data informatics and advanced characterization technologies for additive manufacturing technologies. ADAPT uses these tools to help industry and government qualify, standardize, assess, and optimize advanced manufacturing processes and parts. Several levels of membership to the ADAPT consortium are available. Founding industry members include Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp., Faustson Tool, Lockheed Martin, Citrine Informatics. Grant funding from the Colorado Office of Economic Development & International Trade (OEDIT) was provided to Manufacturer's Edge and The National Institute of Standards and Technology's Hollings Manufacturing Extension Partnership. For more information, find ADAPT on the web, Facebook, or Twitter.

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