News@MM IMCRC, UTS, 3D printing research partnership hits one-year milestone A research partnership between the Innovative Manufacturing CRC (IMCRC), the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) and Downer’s Mineral Technologies has reached its one-year anniversary. The project aims to develop custom 3D printed technologies for precision-engineered mineral separation and mining equipment. The idea of the project is to create mineral separation spirals, which can be produced with a 3D printer after individual models are created by Mineral Technologies. Once up and running, the project hopes to print on site and as required, to save costs and reduce lead-time. According to Alex de Andrade, UTS associate professor and global manager, sales, equipment and technology for Mineral Technologies, the past 12 months have set the project up for further development. “In the first year, we designed a small printer and machinery code as well as printed a scaled
The collaboration will create 3D printed technologies for the mining sector.
version of our selected spiral model. We are now into the cost and wear testing comparisons and in parallel we are building the fullscale bespoke prototype printer,” said de Andrade. Working out of UTS’s Rapido, an advanced technology development unit, the project has all the
core components of innovative manufacturing, according to UTS Rapido director Hervé Harvard. “The project is a worldclass innovation in the area of Industry 4.0, particularly additive manufacturing and internet of things (IoT) sensing, specific to what the project has achieved.
Working with such an innovative team at Mineral Technologies is refreshing and shows that Australia can be a leader in adopting Industry 4.0 principles for global impact,” said Harvard. One outcome that the team have already achieved is applying for a patent for IoT connectivity, which goes towards the project’s Industry 4.0 goals. With IMCRC facilitating the project, the leadership of the program has been a collaboration between industry and the university, something that David Chuter, CEO and managing director of IMCRC, welcomed. “This exceptional project takes industry-led research collaboration to the next level. Within a year we have seen Mineral Technologies and UTS form a team that ‘collaborates to innovate’ and deliver on milestones. Seeing a 3D printed version of their selected spiral model puts it into perspective,” said Chuter.
UNSW students push the potential for vacuum travel Students from the University of New South Wales (UNSW) have been selected to compete in the 2019 Hyperloop Pod Competition. A subsidiary of SpaceX, Hyperloop attempts to create a new method of long-distance travel where people travel through vacuum tubes in pressurised pods, at speeds similar to aircraft. The competition, held on July 21, judges participants by one criteria, maximum speed, including a successful deceleration to finish within 30m of the end of the milelong vacuum tube. The team from UNSW had to condense their engineering process from the normal 18 months down to six, while competing against top
10 AUGUST 2019 Manufacturers’ Monthly
universities around the world. In February the team were invited to go to the SpaceX headquarters in Hawthorne, California. Last year’s winner, the Technical University of Munich, achieved a top speed of 467km/h. In developing the project, the components used are largely off-the-shelf products, according to technical manager Francis McDonald. “It’s such a simple idea, pretty much the best team is the one that goes fastest, but it’s also very complex, we’re dealing with vacuums, so we have to seal all our systems and that’s very interesting to play around with,” said McDonald.
The team’s design connects the internal machinery to a chassis which is enclosed within an aerodynamic shell. “While we want this to be aerodynamic, it has to be also aesthetic and can conform to the regular engineering requirements that you would need for a Hyperloop pod,” said UNSW Hyperloop structures lead Yasmin Zaman. In addition to the ability to test their engineering skills, the competition provides an opportunity for the students to connect with engineers from other countries and students who have similarly attempted to create a pod that can innovate
The winners will be decided on one criteria, speed. travel around the world. “The people who do compete and make it through the multiple rounds of elimination are quite revered in engineering around the world,” said Zaman.
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