Selective laser melting system for additive manufacturing and lightweight material fabrication

A selective laser melting (SLM) system, Renishaw AM400, for research and education in laser additive manufacturing is requested. In both research and education, the requested equipment provides key instrumentation in urgent need for both faculty and students from all STEM programs. Specifically, for the Laboratory of Sustainable and Additive Manufacturing at California State University Northridge (CSUN), the equipment will provide novel laser additive manufacturing capability that is essential to the rapid development of innovative products and devices for aerospace and defense applications. More importantly, the requested equipment can help generate new research areas and education opportunities for all STEM programs. Examples of new research topics may include: 1) Development of complex alloying with SLM; 2) Development and characterization of lightweight metal matrix nanocomposite; 3) lightweight structure creation based on the load path and low carbon design theory; 4) development of innovative additive manufacturing to produce graphene-based sensors; 5) development of next generation hybrid SLM. CSUN manufacturing systems engineering is one of only 20 manufacturing engineering programs in U.S. The requested equipment will certainly foster CSUN‘s long-term effort of creating world leading education program in advanced manufacturing. It is expected that the equipment requested will strongly enhance the research capability and the quality education of the whole university in STEM. This project collaborating with Dr. Xiaochun Li at University of California Los Angeles, and Dr. Yong Chen at University of Southern California.