The goal of this project is to conduct four workshops designed to obtain essential knowledge for how to speed up the transition of research-based advanced manufacturing knowledge into course curriculum at technology and engineering programs. Advanced manufacturing technologies have opened up the gateway for new products that only a decade ago were considered unproducible. For example metals 3D Printing has almost no geometric limitations, which allows engineers to develop mesh������������������based not-fully-dense products. Unfortunately, the educational system that serves to educate the majority of manufacturing technicians and engineers utilizes many of the same curriculum resources for these emerging areas (textbooks, traditional lectures, etc.), frequently creating an unsuitable or inappropriate learning environment for engineering and technician training. This is especially true for the development of manufacturing materials and laboratories to maintain currency in advanced manufacturing. PIs at North Carolina State University (NCSU) and Iowa State University (ISU) believe in the pedagogical implications of a digital community of practice and are committed to offer resources from all curriculum areas of their colleges in order to provide rich, relevant, and varied content to the educational repository described herein. The opportunities in additive manufacturing and direct digital manufacturing are plentiful, and it is critical that students, at very young ages, be exposed to these opportunities to make informed decisions about their education and career paths. We feel that the focus of this research will do to teaching what "open architecture" has done for computing. That is, faculty, technicians and students will all participate in the continued renewal of technical educational materials so that these technologies can grow and the educational materials for new technologies can be put in practice for technical use. This will benefit advanced manufacturing practice by expediting creative laboratory experiences and teaching across the nation. The faculty and administration of ISU and NC State are committed to make this vision a success by conducting workshops for Manufacturing Engineers, Product Engineers and Manufacturing Technologists. The workshops will be used to help define roadblocks associated with the use and development of these educational materials so that the pathway to the development and adoption of new teaching materials can be defined. This is an area that is critical for our economic survival, and the teaching methods outlined herein represent a departure from common-practice that we feel will change technical education in the US. We are excited about this project and feel that the successful completion of it will provide a new paradigm for engineering and technology education materials development, which could become a focus for a new advanced manufacturing education center.

Additively manufactured (AM) metallic components offer a path to shorter lead times, affordable low volume production, and complex and/or highly customized products. Unfortunately for most metal-based mechanical components, surface finish and tolerances are not sufficient for use within assemblies. Post-processing (i.e., secondary operations after 3D printing, such as machining, grinding, micro-finishing and abrasive chemical treatment) can be used to address many of these requirements. The focus of this consortium proposal is to develop a strategy to fully integrate design, additive manufacturing and subtractive manufacturing so that our manufacturing communities can reap the combined benefits of these technologies. OEMs and SMEs throughout the country would greatly benefit from AM-based processing, as AM offers unique production capabilities and response time. However, challenges of achieving the desired precision and surface finish similar to that of conventional subtractive manufacturing are still out-of-reach. Furthermore, secondary operations can take longer and cost more than the initial AM processing. These critical issues, using current practice, rule out potential solutions that can lead to high growth opportunities for regional manufacturing ecosystems with technologies that include subtractive, additive, post process finishing and metrology, which often represent 50% of the overall value of an industrial part. Existing processing capabilities and accuracies of metal AM are insufficient for most mechanical applications. Furthermore, supplementary traditional processes can achieve higher tolerance and surface finish, but are limited in material, design complexity and design-independent processing capabilities. The logical solution is to integrate design principles with existing metal AM as well as those from traditional processes������������������, for superior accuracy and finishing. Successful integration of these two varied approaches would require careful initial and intermediate steps in the design analysis for hybrid manufacturing prior to producing AM parts and then physical part exchange. Also required is the integration of computational and other aspects when transitioning across multiple manufacturing systems. The former requires a hybrid-oriented design approaches which integrates AM-independent location with secondary operations and inspection capabilities. The area of metrology and precision manufacturing is the next stage in the evolution of additive manufacturing and development of this capability will position AM strategically to capture this growth market. The advanced manufacturing community in the US will greatly benefit from improved processing capabilities that produce complex ���������������functional������������������ parts through this hybrid approach. In order to achieve the basic goal of this coalition, a group of experts from the design, additive manufacturing, finish machining and the CAD/CAM communities have been assembled to define the critical requirements of bringing AM into commercial practice. The vision of this consortium is to empower US manufacturing industries into becoming global leaders in the successful integration of an advanced manufacturing technology in AM with conventional value chains. Specifically, this consortium������������������s goal is to bring together individual stakeholders working towards accelerated adoption of precision AM metal parts, thereby growing advanced manufacturing capabilities, improving the efficiency and reliability of the AM process, workforce training and education; and development of supply chain for hybrid manufacturing. The specific objectives of the proposed consortium are to (a) create a US-based consortium of entities including industries, academic, professional organizations and research entities who can both add to and benefit from advanced and hybrid manufacturing, (b) identify and prioritize current shortcomings under industry leadership and the technical challenges in achieving efficient hybrid processing, (c) develop a road-map and technology infrastructure that is a ready-to-implement post-processing system designed for finish machining of metallic AM parts, without significant modifications to existing machine set-up; this will provide a viable low-cost path to entry for SMEs and OEMs who currently (and in the near future) do not have the capital, technical know-how and experience in metal AM, (d) identify and detail technological infrastructures required to address those challenges and (e) outline workforce development and education outreach programs for the implementation of the hybrid approach which will greatly enhance the technical expertise of our manufacturing companies. We strongly believe that the success and advancement of any pre-competitive manufacturing processes is dependent on collective efforts of individual stakeholders, providing a platform to seek industry requirements for varying applications and recruiting consortium members of relevant expertise to identify and address those challenges. This collective approach is more efficient for our manufacturing community as opposed to individual companies developing, assessing and integrating these technical parameters within their internal business planning and product development cycles. We envision that this unique roadmap will provide a structured network of metal AM and hybrid experts and users, who can formulate, support and address the needs and strategies for this relatively disruptive AM technology.

Direct Metal Additive Manufacturing processes have been around for over a decade and much research and development have been spent on improving process stability, material properties, build speed, surface finishing and part accuracy. However, in most cases, the parts coming out of a direct metal AM machine cannot be used directly due to the lack of dimensional accuracy and surface finish. Finishing of some sort is usually necessary and in some cases finish machining followed by grinding and/or polishing will be required. Currently, to finish machine a freeform metal component fabricated via direct metal AM, presents difficulties since special fixtures will be needed to hold the part during finishing and a toolpath needs to be generated. While most parts can be produced in an AM system within 24-48 hours it usually takes 4-6 weeks to do the finishing of just one component. To make AM more viable for fabrication of usable parts in small quantities a faster and more automatic finishing approach is needed. The proposed research project will develop a fully automatic finishing system that is highly software driven and guides the system through the process. The goal is for this hybrid system to be used to finish any part regardless of the AM process used and regardless of the CNC milling machine that is available, as long as a 4-axis configuration is present. The hybrid system will accept a design file of the desired product and the software will plan the finishing by adding machining allowance to the required surfaces, optimize the machining approach, and add sacrificial fixtures and part supports. The output file can now be used by an AM system to fabricate the geometry. The next step is to place the unfinished part in a 4-axis CNC milling machine that is equipped with a laser scanner. The part will be scanned to capture the exact volume as well as the exact orientation. The scanned information is fed back into the software package that will automatically realign the machine axis with the part axis, and automatically generate a toolpath using a concept known as CNC-RP.

According to the American Burn Association, in 2011 around 450,000 people were treated for burn injuries. There are various medical treatments to address these injuries. Some of these include split-thickness autologous skin grafting, autologous skin grafting with meshing, and the use of bioengineered skin constructs. Although these methods may be adequate for small area burns, they are not ideal for large area burns. The ideal method would be to take the patient’s own cells and engineer a large skin tissue construct. Although there are many research groups who are working on this, they are not close to translating this into a standard clinical practice. Using the knowledge that skin has great potential for expansion; the investigators propose a better method for autograft skin transplant by taking a small piece of donor skin and stretching it in a bioreactor in vitro. The research will utilize a novel skin expander to enlarge a small piece of harvested skin over a period of 14 days. The novel skin expander is using a pressurized membrane to stretch the skin at a predetermined rate in medial so that the skin will not just stretch but regenerate to compensate for the thinning of the tissue. The goal is to be able to expand the skin sample more than 200% while keeping it viable.

This proposal outlines a direct manufacturing technique (CAD model directly to part fabrication) that combines both additive and subtractive manufacturing techniques to allow the rapid production of functional high performance mechanical components in a very short period. This work will provide a never before possible rapid capability to make parts with complex freeform geometries as provided by an Electron Beam Melting machine (or other functional part additive system), while providing exacting tolerance control and material properties, as provided by CNC by using these processes sequentially but automatically. Previous efforts to create the, somewhat mythical, Make Button part-producing machine have failed whenever one isolates their efforts to either fully additive or fully subtractive methods. Although hybrid manufacturing techniques have been attempted, no hybrid system has met the challenges put forth by the needs of today's advanced weapon, aerospace, medical and commercial parts systems. We have developed two significant advances: 1) Using sacrificial fixtures produced during the additive manufacturing process for locating and securing the part during the subtractive process, and 2) For subtractive processing, use a layered method (opposite to but similar to what is done in additive manufacturing) so that no CNC programming is required for producing the part, using ?island milling? with a very small depth of cut. These developments will make it possible for a Make Bottom method to be developed using existing machines, e.g., an EBM and a 5 axis CNC machining center. Two computational challenges have been identified: 1) How to use computational methods for analyzing a CAD model in order to differentiate features that have requirements suitable/achievable by the additive versus subtractive stages, or both, and 2) How to develop automatic process plans, including fixturing and tooling considerations, for both stages of the rapid manufacturing process. This research will lead to a new technology that would create service parts and prototypes for next-generation complex mechanical part systems with the correct material properties, to the exacting tolerances and advanced geometries needed, and do so in an automated manner with little or no human intervention required. In this project, the following aggregate level challenges are addressed: (1) Development of procedures and heuristics to differentiate part features suitable for additive versus subtractive stages, or both, (2) Identify and analyze the location and design of sacrificial fixtures for both additive and subtractive processes and (3) Automatically generate process plan and parameters (machine code) which will eliminate/minimize manual process engineering interaction with the system. Broader Impact: This research will lead to a new automated technology to fabricate high-performance parts and prototypes to exacting tolerances and advanced geometries. This will particularly benefit the economics of low volume custom parts as in parts for defense systems, aerospace systems and patient-specific medical implants. Furthermore, the incorporation of sacrificial fixturing in subtractive methods could transform the scope of current material removal processes and enhance its capabilities to produce parts with greater geometrical complexities. The proposed research will be disseminated at international conferences by the PIs and the involved graduate students. The PIs have a long history of working with minority students and several such students will be involved in the proposed research. This research will also be exhibited at open houses and summer camps that are attended by high school students and their parents in addition to onsite recruiting trips at targeted high schools. These venues are important recruitment tools for the engineering departments and these are often attended by the top students from around the county with a very diverse background. Intellectual Merit: The merit of this research lies in both manufacturing and engineering design dom

This project is focused on the initial bridging of two currently separate research domains one of regenerative medicine and one of manufacturing engineering. The Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine (WFIRM) is one of the leading research institutes in developing methods for growing replacement tissue and organs for human implantation. WFIRM and North Carolina State University's Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering (NCSU-DISE) seek to accelerate the translation from experimentally oriented production to commercially economical tissue and organ transplants. These two very different research partners will collaborate on initial research to transform experimental laboratory processes into the industrial processes necessary to enable economic production of regenerative medical products. The focus in this initial effort will be to translate the recipes and protocols used in the early production of regenerative tissue and organs into manufacturing engineering terms. The major result of this early bridging research will be translating the biology and medical requirements that have been developed at WFIRM for one specific organ into the kinds of engineering process definitions and resource requirements needed to develop full scale manufacturing. Formal engineering models that will explicitly define the resource requirements for the bio-reactors used to produce tissue and organs will be developed. Process models characterizing the transformations that take place outside as well as within the bio-reactors will also be developed. The intent of the formal model development is not simply to chart the current methods used to produce regenerative products but rather to define the basic transformations that take place as well as to try to identify early constraints on the resources and process methods used in their manufacture. These process models will then become a key resource in developing manufacturing system model of efficient production systems for regenerative products. Broader Impact: The impact of this far reaching. To cite Dan Barrett from Inside Higher ED (January 5, 2011), Advances in medicine and biotechnology -- from the sequencing of the human genome to the development of small chips to detect cancer in the bloodstream -- were driven largely by scientists coming together from diverse disciplines to work on common problems. But a blue ribbon panel said here Tuesday that these advances also signify something larger: the creation of a new model -- dubbed "convergence" -- in which engineering and physical sciences, among other disciplines, join forces with the life sciences. This project provides early convergence of regenerative medicine and manufacturing engineering, and establishes a foundation for a much more ambitious research agenda. Intellectual Merit: This proposal focuses on a critical health care issue facing the aging American population ? that is the critical problem of diseased tissue and organs that every year result in extraordinary medical expenditures, and that take thousands of lives. The merit of the research is bridging two very disparate disciplines so that major inroads into the development of economically practical and safe organ transplants can be made possible. This work will not resolve this problem but will provide the impetus and necessary knowledge base for further research.

The project addresses the production of a new type of product ? the manufacture of human tissue and organs. The project consists of groups of domain experts at Wake Forest's Institute of Regenerative Medicine (WFIRM) and North Carolina State University's (NCSU's) College of Engineering that have come together to work collaboratively to assess, document and understand the current state-of-the-art for manufacturing regenerative medicine products. The primary focus of the proposed research is to use the knowledge base developed at WFIRM to define production requirements for the creation of tissue and organs and use those requirements to define and organize production systems that can produce living products safely, efficiently and affordably. The production system requirements will include: flow patterns, product requirements, process requirements (including FDA) and inventory and materials requirements. These components will be analyzed so that new system concepts for volume manufacture of tissues can be proposed. The manufacturing system design must be scalable to produce lots of size one efficiently and with appropriate quality and traceability in a cost effective manner while understanding the inventory and supply chain of this industry. The project will also address technological development requirements and other manufacturing system tools necessary for successfully achieving this vision.